A Rurouni Goes to College
by L. Mouse
Summary: Sequel to Swordsmen and Walk Not Alone. Highlander crossover. Kenshin is a 160 year old Immortal. He's enrolled as a college freshman to protect Kaoru's reincarnation Carrie. Finished.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes Okay, it's official, I'm doing the Kenshin-goes-to-college story. God help me, I must be nuts.

For those of you who haven't been following along, this is a crossover 'verse between Highlander and RuroKen and Kenshin is (in this story) a 160+ year old Immortal. (It's set 2014.) However, you do not need to be familiar with Highlander to read this -- all you need to know is that Kenshin is Immortal until somebody chops off his head. And people frequently try.

I am also going to try to make this story reasonably accessible for folks who haven't read Swordsmen, Walk Not Alone, and the unfinished A Life Lived. I recommend reading Swordsmen, A Life Lived through the end of the Chiyoko Arc (which is a good place to stop until I can finish it) and WNA, but it's not absolutely necessary. This story just has spoilers for WNA and Swordsmen in it that may affect your enjoyment of reading those stories.

And I said I wouldn't have a chapter done today but I had a bout of insomnia last night and this was mostly done anyway, it was just a matter of stitching the bits together. So surprise!

And as usual, I'll note that I have a livejournal -- ljmouse. I often post chapters there before putting them on and sometimes I'll put out-of-timeline scenes and extras on the lj too.

Edit Thanks to Ceylonna for pointing out a few errors. Fixed 'em.

------------------

Kenshin pulled into the college parking lot, and promptly nearly hit a college kid driving a Corvette who zipped out of a space in front of him. The kid looked didn't look any older than seventeen or eighteen -- by the standards of this modern world, a child.

A child who was piloting several thousand pounds of deadly steel with irresponsible carelessness.

Kenshin shook his head, making his pony tail swish across his back, as he claimed the spot the kid had just vacated. _I can't think of them as children_, he scolded himself. _I'm supposed to be one of them._

He glanced at the stack of books on the passenger side seat, which had been purchased at an off-campus bookstore. His transcript from Himura Aki High School For International Business Studies in Tokyo was tucked into the top book -- an English 101 text book. Beneath it there was a list of his college classes and other assorted papers that he'd picked up at the registration office this morning; he was not going to go for a business degree but rather one in Film Studies.

He had ties -- rather odd ties -- to the Himura Aki school. The principle was actually his descendent, via the adoption of Himura Aki in the 1800's, and knew full well what he was. Michiko also fully understood his need to reinvent himself every decade or so, and she had helped him enroll in the high school as a senior, for what was supposed to be his "last year" of school -- officially, he had been a transfer student from England.

In truth, he was nothing of the kind. Still, he had managed to pass the last year of high school and his abilities at track and field as well as reasonably decent grades had gotten him into Seacouver U as an incoming freshman. Having a verifiable record of attending High School had made life much easier.

He was a freshman who was over a hundred and sixty years old, but who was counting?

Kenshin dropped the truck's keys into his computer bag, and clambered out of the truck. It was an old four by four with several inches of lift; he'd had fun with it over the summer, enjoying a bit of travel in remote areas of the US and Canada. That brief respite from the surprisingly hard work of school was over, however, and Kenshin fully empathized with the groans and complaints of his much younger classmates.

He had one duffel bag of clothing in the truck's back seat. He pulled it out, slung it over his shoulder by the straps, hung the computer bag off his other shoulder, and then, after a wary look about for observers, he extracted his sword from under the seat and hooked it to his belt. It disappeared from view, carefully concealed with a bit of psychic illusion. He then picked up the stack of books. Thus heavily laden he headed towards the dorms.

Among the papers tucked into the English text was one telling him that his dorm was number 207. He had been to an orientation earlier; had sat through a lecture about dorm rules, and had met the 'dorm mother' as well as some of his teachers and the dean. He liked the dorm mother; she was a forty-something woman, no-nonsense but not, he thought, inclined to be unfair. Since the dorm was co-ed, they needed someone fairly tough to keep trouble to a minimum.

The lobby doors required a pass card to get in; he was attempting to juggle books and his bags to fish the card out of his pocket when someone reached around him to swipe their card. "Thanks," Kenshin said, glancing back. He'd known someone was approaching, but they had felt relatively nonthreatening.

"Incoming freshman?" The guy guessed, holding the door open. "I swear they're younger every year."

"I'm nineteen," Kenshin lied -- it was the age on his forged paperwork. "We graduate from high school a year later in Japan. And my name's Himura Kenshin. And thanks."

"Shannon," the guy was average height, but a very muscular build. "I thought you were a girl, from behind."

Kenshin wasn't entirely sure how to answer that, but the guy didn't give him a chance. "Better watch out; that hair of yours, and that pretty face, are going to cause you trouble. People might take you entirely the wrong way."

Kenshin recognized an insult when he heard one. Wearily he said, "And how would that be?"

"They might think you're gay or something."

"And this would be a problem ... why?" Kenshin knew he was baiting the man. Well, the man's words had irritated him. A lifetime of mistaken assumptions concerning his sexuality -- he was cheerfully heterosexual, thank you very much -- had taught him patience, most of the time. But a complete stranger picking on him out of the blue was simply beyond the pale.

The man recoiled almost comically. "You _are _gay!"

Oh, good grief. Kenshin sighed. "My last three girlfriends ..." _who I married, _"... might beg to differ. And all three of them assured me that they found long hair on a guy sexy."

Shannon didn't look convinced.

Kenshin added, with a good bit of snark, "One might assume the same thing about your _name _that you are assuming about my hair and my height."

The man's eyes narrowed. Kenshin caught a flare of _very _angry ki, and was surprised by how focused it was. The guy would make a good swordsman, he thought absently. Shannon snarled, "It's a _man's _name."

"Ah, I know. It's Irish." Kenshin smiled at Shannon. "But do you see my point?"

Shannon continued to glare at Kenshin. Kenshin held his hands up. "I don't want trouble, Shannon. Let's start this over. I'm Kenny Myojin, from Tokyo. I'm pleased to meet you ..."

"You don't look Japanese."

"This one has been told this before."

"You speak funny."

"This one has also been told this. Do you have difficulty understanding me? If you do, I can find another way to say things." Kenshin gave Shannon his broadest rurouni smile; the one that said, _I'm a happy village idiot, won't you love me_? "English isn't my first language, that it isn't."

"People are going to pick on you," Shannon predicted, hands in his pockets, staring down at Kenshin.

Kenshin continued to smile. "This has happened before. I think I'll survive. And if you'll excuse me, I want to find my dorm."

----------------

Room 207 was at the top of the stairs, and directly over the lobby, within sensing distance of any other Immortals who might enter the building. Nobody was going to get on the second floor without him knowing about it. Carrie's room was past his, four doors down.

And that was the real reason he was here: Carrie.

Or -- at least a good part of the truth, anyway. He _was _looking forward to getting a degree; he'd been many things in his life, but college educated wasn't one of them. He didn't actually need to work, as long as he was relatively frugal, but he enjoyed keeping his hands and mind busy. And he'd loved the cinema since he'd seen his first silent movie almost a century before. He hoped the degree in Film Studies would open a few doors to interesting jobs.

Not that anyone would believe him as an actor -- he was under five foot tall, his face was scarred, and he had a voice that sounded like it belonged to a woman. MacLeod, however -- when he got done snickering about Kenshin's college plans -- had suggested that he might find work as a stuntman in the industry.

Stunt work would certainly be practical -- with Kenshin's slight build and athletic abilities, not to mention his near indestructibility, stunt work for female actors was possible. And it sounded like a great deal of fun.

However, the degree was definitely secondary to the primary reason he was here, which was Carrie Seta.

He found and swiped his pass key at his door and the lock buzzed open. Balancing his books in one hand, Kenshin slipped through the doorway and then flipped on the light.

It had been Carrie Seta, Soujiro's adopted pre-Immortal daughter, who had been the impetus to get him to go to school. He was her bodyguard -- her father had been unwilling for her to go to away to college because of safety concerns until Kenshin had stepped in. Soujiro's concerns were legitimate, Kenshin knew, but he also believed that Carrie deserved a chance for a real life. And she had done brilliantly at a local college for three years, completing a four year degree early. She also had _earned_ the right to attend any college she wanted, as far as Kenshin was concerned.

And ... well, she was the reincarnation of Kaoru. She wasn't a carbon copy of his late wife; she had been raised in the modern world, America, in a time of peace and prosperity. Still, Kenshin felt ferociously protective of her. He simply couldn't help it.

The dorm room was small: two beds, two desks, two dressers under a window, and a tiny fridge and sink.

Kenshin slung his duffel onto the right-hand bed. He regarded the room with a somewhat disappointed frown, noting that the square footage was greater than his tiny seventh-floor Tokyo apartment but it wasn't very well laid out. It lacked a kitchen, it shared a bathroom with the dorm next door, and the two twin beds took up all sorts of useable space.

He contemplated replacing his bed with a futon. However, the bed was attached to the wall. Short of dismantling it, he couldn't get rid of it. Space was going to be tight, even by his standards ... He had considered renting an apartment to share with Carrie but she had wanted to stay in a dorm "for the experience" and he wanted to be as close to her as possible so he could keep an eye on her.

Well, he though philosophically, he'd slept in far worse places. 'Worse places' included the undersides of bridges, and on muddy battlefields, and in the middle of the woods when it was raining, and in vermin-infested huts, and in an amazing assortment of inexpensive hotels around the world.

The place was clean ... he watched in dismay as a roach scuttled under the bed.

Mostly clean.

Cautiously, he pried up the mattress on his bed. More roaches scurried away from the light.

He poked in the crevices of the bed frame -- experience had taught him caution when sleeping in strange accommodations. However, he found no sign of bedbugs, lice, or fleas; the room's vermin seemed to be limited to roaches and, likely, mice. He was unhappy about the roaches and rodents, but it was an old building and perhaps they were inevitable. He would scrub the room as soon as he could get his hands on a bucket and some soap, and buy traps for the rodents tomorrow. There were mouse turds along the wall.

Kenshin was standing with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face when the door behind him opened. A tall boy, burdened by several suitcases, stumbled through, tripped over his own feet, and went sprawling in Kenshin's direction. Kenshin, boy, and suitcases, all hit the floor together. Kenshin could have dodged, but he'd elected not to -- better _he _crack his head on the floor than the kid.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!" The teenager scrambled backwards and lurched to his feet. "Are you okay?"

Kenshin had, indeed, hit his skull on the linoleum. Gingerly, he probed his skull with his fingers and said, "Aa, I'll live. I'm Kenny Myojin."

"Umm. Sandy. Alexander, actually, but everybody calls me Sandy. Thomas." The kid sat down on the left-hand bed. "They said I had a Japanese guy for a roommate. Did they change my assignment?"

"No, that's me," Kenshin offered Sandy-Alexander-actually his hand to shake. The boy had paws like catcher's mitts; Kenshin's hand was completely swallowed up by Sandy's fingers. It appeared that the boy had a bit of growing left to do, if one judged by his rawboned, lanky frame.

"Wow, you're short. Oh, sorry!" Sandy clapped one hand over his mouth, and shook Kenshin's hand with the other. "There I go, my mouth leading my brain again ..."

"I'm four foot eleven," Kenshin replied, dryly. At least his roommate appeared to be much nicer than the jock he'd met earlier. "I've heard it before. And yes, I'm Japanese."

"Oh. Good. I mean, good that you speak good English. I was worried you wouldn't. I don't care if you're Japanese or not." Sandy tilted his head, and with disarming curiosity said, "You must bleach your hair, then."

"No, I'm just a freak of nature," Kenshin said, with a smile. "It's real. So are the eyes, before you ask."

"Albino, then?"

"Maybe." Kenshin sat down on his bed and unzipped his duffel. Immortals were found, not born, so he wasn't sure if genetic traits actually applied in his case. "I've never had a good explanation why my hair's red. Most albinos don't see as well as I do, though. And I do tan a little."

"Oh." Sandy paused, then said, "Incomplete expression of a gene, then."

Kenshin glanced at him and observed, "One might guess that you're here for the medical program."

Sandy ducked his head, a curious gesture, and said, "Yeah. And I'm a bit of a nerd. Sorry if I'm being nerd-y and rude."

"It's quite alright. As reactions to my appearance go, that's minor. You're not going, 'demon demon kill the demon!' so we're good, that we are." Kenshin claimed the right-hand dresser and started putting his clothes away. He had not brought much -- there were just a couple changes of jeans and t-shirts, which he neatly put away, plus boxers, socks, and a few yukata for working out.

"People really _do _that to you, then?"

"Not recently." One of the best things about the modern era was its lack of superstitious peasants.

"Is that all you brought?" Sandy was watching him in fascination as he folded up the duffel bag and put it away in the bottom dresser drawer. That left Kenshin's laptop bag -- he took the laptop out, and set it to charge on one of the desks.

"I'm going to go shopping, later. I've been wandering a bit, for the summer. I like to travel light."

"Traveling?"

"Me, a truck, and the road." Kenshin confirmed. He missed the freedom of his travels already.

"Sounds way cool." Sandy blinked. He tilted his head sideways, birdlike, then said, "If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?"

"Nineteen," Kenshin glanced over his shoulder at Sandy, then turned the desk chair around to face him. "High schools in Japan run a year later than they do here."

"You don't look it!"

"Heh. Tell me about it."

"I just turned seventeen." Sandy hunched again. "I'm a nerd. I graduated from high school early." A pause, and then another question, "What are you going to school for?"

"Film studies." Just as he said that there was a knock on their dorm room door. Kenshin stood up, recognizing the faint buzz of a pre-Immortal, and answered the knock.

Carrie was twenty now, and a transfer student into the medical school. Kenshin hadn't seen her in seven years; in his head, Carrie was still a gawky teenager with a multicolored dye job in her hair and a fairly typical amount of teenage angst. Now ...

"Carrie-dono," Kenshin breathed, holding a hand out to shake. She looked fantastic.

She grabbed his hand and promptly pulled him into a hug. "You! God, you haven't changed a bit!"

He let himself be hugged; really, he didn't like to be touched by most people, but this was Carrie, and he knew he could trust her. Except he didn't realize until she tightened her arms around him that there was also the problem that she wasn't kid-Carrie anymore, she was all grown up, and he found himself blushing ferociously because his nose was at a rather uncomfortable level. When had she gotten so _tall_? And so, ah, well endowed?

After a moment, cheeks flaming, Kenshin managed to extricate himself from the hug. He was reasonably sure it had been completely innocent, but ... damnit, he'd been expecting her to still be a child, even though he knew academically she wasn't!

"It's so good to see you!" She crowed, "I can't believe we're going to the same school. It's just too weird!"

"Aa, it's a bit weird, but I'm very glad to see you face to face again." Kenshin forced himself to think of things other than the soft, pillowy body parts his cheek had just been shoved against. They were quite ample body parts. Nicely formed. Perky. The very male part of his soul appreciated those body parts very much.

_Face to face, Kenshin no baka_! He forced himself to meet her eyes and not stare at her, ah, headlights. Thank God he _wasn't _actually nineteen, or ...

Ack! He sat down on the bed and casually pulled his computer bag into his lap. "So, Carrie," he said, cheeks still flaming and praying she didn't notice, "When did you get in?"

"Last night. You?" She sounded bright and happy and very casual; he was a hundred percent certain that his hormonal interested was not shared by the woman in front of him, which made it all the worse. Likely, she saw him just as family. He wanted to crawl under the bed and die of embarrassment.

"An hour ago." He was somewhat surprised he wasn't squeaking when he talked.

"And you're already unpacked." She smirked. "I've got a bet with my mother that you didn't bring more than one bag."

"Whoever bet 'one bag' won," Kenshin replied, unsurprised to be the subject of a bet, "if you're not counting my computer. I'm going shopping later, however, if you want to come."

"Umm," Kenshin's forgotten roommate spoke up, "I'm Sandy."

Carrie glanced at him, and smiled. "Hi, Sandy."

Sandy blushed. Kenshin would have bet five bucks that Sandy was blushing simply because a Real Girl was Talking To Him, and that it wouldn't matter if the girl looked like a horse, he still would have reacted the same way.

"I apologize, Sandy," Kenshin said, remembering his manners. "This is Carrie Seta -- we've been friends for a long time through the internet. Carrie, this is Sandy Thomas."

This was true, of course, and was the cover story they'd agreed on in advance. It just wasn't anywhere close to the whole story. Even Carrie herself didn't know the whole story.

Kenshin had kept in fairly close touch with Carrie for the last several years. Above and beyond the fact that she was Kaoru's reincarnation he liked her just for herself. They'd traded e-mails, and chatted on ICQ, and he had spoken to both her and her parents by phone every few months. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, he had not been to see the Setas for several years. He hadn't actually _seen _her since Atsuko's funeral in Japan.

And that had been a farce he wanted to forget.

"Hi," Sandy blinked at her, looking flustered. He stammered, "I-I should probably say something witty now."

Carrie laughed. She sounded amused by Sandy's reaction. "I think you just did. -- Ken, I was going out to get something to eat. Want to join me? We can catch up over lunch."

"Sure," he said. "Give me a second to change, though."

Actually, he still wasn't sure he could stand up without embarrassing himself with a tent in his trousers. But it sounded like a plausible excuse and it would give him some time to, ah, collect his thoughts. She grinned, apparently accepting his stalling tactic at face value, and said, "Okay. I'll meet you downstairs in the lobby."

After she was gone, Sandy breathed in awe, "That's a _girl_."

"Yes," Kenshin said. Although he knew what Sandy meant, he couldn't help but tease the kid a bit. He observed, "It is a co-ed dorm."

"But she's _hot. _Dude, and she likes you!"

"Yes, she is very attractive," Kenshin agreed. He was also astonished by his reaction to her beauty. At over a hundred and sixty years of age he'd seen his share of women; he had been married three times; he'd deflected the interest of a multitude of women who were eying him as a potential mate, and he had turned down a few hundred offers for casual sex, as well, over the years.

On the other hand, Carrie was Kaoru's reincarnation. And his heart knew it.

On the third hand, Tammy -- Tomoe's reincarnation -- didn't interest him much at all except as a friend.

Sandy sounded far too enthusiastic when he said, "Kenny, you might score with her. And she's _hot_. Just tell me to get out if you need the dorm to yourself ... with the girl!"

Kenshin turned blazing angry eyes on Sandy, irritated despite himself -- because it was Carrie, and his statement implied a slur on Carrie's integrity. "I do not '_score_' with women, Alexander. She is a friend, that she is. Nothing more."

"Riiiiight. And why do you have your backpack in your lap again?"

Kenshin threw a pillow at Sandy as his cheeks flamed scarlet. "Oro!" He groaned, flopping backwards onto the bed. In Japanese, he muttered, "This is going to be interesting ..."

-----------------

Carrie was waiting in the lobby with a friend when Kenshin descended the stairs. The friend was taller than Carrie by a couple of inches -- which made her _very _tall for a woman, perhaps five ten or five eleven -- and, Kenshin noted mostly academically, she was pretty.

He thought she might be Native American, or perhaps Polynesian -- or some ethnic mix, perhaps. She had long, straight dark hair, flawless olive skin, and a very mischievous smile. And he knew she was Megumi reborn the moment he saw her, which made the, '_Hey she's pretty,'_ observation purely platonic in nature.

"Hi," she said, with interest, as he walked up.

"Meg, this is Kenny Myojin. Kenny, Margaret Yazzi's my best friend." Carrie indicated him with a wave.

"... _This _is your pen-pal?" Meg said, grinning. Obviously, Carrie had fed her the story that he was an internet friend. And oh, he knew that grin. She was every bit the fox-lady this time around too -- that expression was evilly playful. He found himself unconsciously responding with a smile of his own. And sure enough, she turned to Carrie and said, "He's _adorable_."

"Oro!" Kenshin protested, obediently laughing and playing the clown.

"Meg, don't!" Carrie scowled at her, sounding annoyed.

"Don't what?" Kenshin asked, with real curiosity. Oh -- he knew what Megumi was doing. The minx was flirting just to make Carrie jealous because she thought he was a long-distance 'friend' which, in her mind, meant boyfriend material.

"Don't ... just, don't. Ken's not like that." Carrie was practically stomping her foot in annoyance. "Meg!"

"Not like what?" Meg said, sweetly.

"Not like ... like ... like ... he's my _friend_, and it's not like that!" Carrie had her fists balled at he side and she sounded genuinely angry. "Meg, stop!"

"Oh, really ..." Meg purred. "In that case, Kenny, I'm looking for a date for Friday night ..."

"Sorry!" Kenshin held his hands up. "I've got plans already."

"But is it plans with me ...?" Meg tossed her hair over her shoulder and blinked innocently at him.

Oh, yeah, Megumi hadn't changed much. Worse, she had been raised a modern American, with all that implied. "Sorry," Kenshin said, gently. "I do already have plans."

Meg leaned over to Carrie and whispered in a stage whisper, "I think he's a keeper, Carrie."

"Meg, _stop_! You don't understand!" Carrie shoved Meg away and stomped off towards the door.

Meg giggled and said to Kenshin, who was staring after Carrie in dismay, "Girl needs to lighten up. And she must really like you; you're the only guy I know she calls a friend. She usually doesn't care much for men."

Kenshin sighed. He had a feeling he was going to have his patience tested sorely, and on a regular basis, by this modern incarnation of Megumi. "Are you coming with us for lunch?"

Meg's eyes twinkled as she said, "Nah, I'll let you kids have some time alone. Carrie and I are sharing a room; I'll see her later. Mind, I'm going to pump her for all the details ..."

"Megum ... Meg-dono ..." He stuttered to a stop, then tried again for the casual western informality that he was trying very hard to accomplish because he wanted to blend in. And he failed, because he just couldn't bring himself to call her Meg without knowing her better, and even then, it would be difficult. "Miss Yazzi, please don't hassle Carrie about her friendship with me. It really isn't like that between me and her, that it isn't, and I think it makes her really angry."

Meg's eyes widened. "Wait a second. Are you _gay_?"

He spluttered in shock. What was it with these people and questioning his sexual orientation? It was embarrassing and annoying. "N-n-no!"

"Oh." She sounded almost disappointed. He wondered how much worse her teasing would be if he was gay. Likely, he guessed, it would be worse by an order of magnitude -- because, then he'd be safe. He'd never been so glad to be heterosexual in his life, because Meg was scary. Then she dimpled, "You're so cute, and all the cute ones are ..."

"Oro!" He held his hands up wardingly. "I'm going after Carrie now, that I am."

--------------

Carrie was outside on the walk, arms folded, and he could practically see steam rising from the top of her curly hair -- she was genuinely pissed off. "I _hate _it when she does that. Everything's about boys and sex with her, and she thinks I should be like that too ... oooh!"

He touched her arm gently, and she looked down at him. He said quietly, "She does care about you, I think. And she means well."

"Oh, I know. We've been best friends since kindergarten. Just ... oooh. I've told her and told her that we're just _friends_, Ken-nii."

Concerned by her level of upset he rested a hand on her arm and said, "Carrie-dono? Are you okay?"

She was radiating upset; he could have sensed her half a mile away. She shook her head, "I will be. I just ... I _hate _it when she teases me like that. And she never listens when I tell her to stop."

"She have a boyfriend?" Kenshin asked, with sudden amusement. Oh, he could have some fun with this. He knew somebody who did need to meet Meg.

"You're not seriously thinking of ..." Carrie said, with alarm.

"Not me," Kenshin grinned, mischeviously, "I'm thinking of setting her up with a friend. Maybe if she got laid she'd leave you alone."

"Kenshin!" She squeaked, sounding completely and totally scandalized. "I can't believe you just said that."

"What?" He gave her an completely innocent look. "You're a grownup. I don't have to be G-rated around you anymore."

"But, but ..." Carrie clapped her hands over her eyes. "Please. I prefer the G-rated Kenshin."

"Oro! Okay, okay, I'll have mercy on you, that I will." He was amused by her reaction. It was so very like Kaoru, who had also been embarrassed by teasing about adult relationships.

With relief, she said, "Thank you! And on that note, let's go get lunch."

-----------------


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Notes I've been having trouble with my 'net connection all week -- this really sucks, because I have Real Work To Do. It appears they're throttling back upload speeds to a painfully slow level. And then tonight we have our first summer monsoon thunderstorm, so I turned the satellite modem and router off to avoid fryage. (Yay for laptops! At least I can write.)

--------------------------

"I can't believe you bought all this stuff!" Carrie shook her head, still in awe of the power shopping trip he'd taken her on at a local electronics store.

Kenshin, standing in the bed of his pickup, reached down to the box Carrie was passing up. It was a rice cooker; he'd purchased one for his own room because he had gotten a look at the cafeteria's breakfast menu and it was rather ... Western. Kenshin was reasonably sure the desire to let his belt out a notch had been purely a psychological reaction to reading a menu that consisted of various incarnations of sugary baked goods, sugary fried pastries, syrup, butter, eggs, cheese, and fatty meat. He would be far happier with a Japanese style breakfast every morning, and so would his waistline.

As well, the two shopping carts they'd wheeled out contained microwave ovens, small flat panel TVs for each of their dorms, two inexpensive printers, and a laptop for Carrie and an electric skillet for him, plus assorted small gadgets. The skillet was technically against the dorm rules, but until they told him to get rid of it, he was intending to use it.

The boxes joined several bags of clothing already in the bed of the truck -- Carrie, upon learning he had exactly three changes of jeans and t-shirts, had taken him to the mall. With enthusiasm. A scary, scary amount of enthusiasm. He now had several different outfits that passed the Test of Young Woman Approval. In truth, he had not minded the shopping and he had no issues with wearing stylish clothing, as long as it was comfortable. It was just a pain to haul it around when he was traveling.

He answered her statement with a smile, "Your father said to get you a laptop and the printer and the TV."

"I do not know how you talked him into it."

__

By agreeing to pay, Kenshin thought, but didn't say. The Setas were not wealthy; Akane was a nurse, and Soujiro a construction worker. Soujiro had never even had the benefit of the limited early education that Kenshin had -- he was most comfortable in blue collar jobs. Plus, there was relative anonymity and a high turnover in construction work.

They had some savings, but not a lot. Kenshin had determined out that most Immortals were either very, very wealthy or working-class; there was little middle ground. It largely depended on their inclination to save money. Soujiro had only recently started putting money away, at Akane's urging.

Kenshin himself wasn't exactly filthy rich, but he was comfortable. He lived off the interest of a nest egg he'd inherited from his sons, decades before -- Kenshin was somewhat embarrassed to admit that he had held down very few jobs in his life, other than the odd blue-collar one.

His accountant, also an Immortal, claimed that he'd be a whole hell of a lot wealthier if he didn't give so much of the interest away to various causes and family members. His account would bitch about this shopping spree, but Kenshin figured money was meant to be enjoyed.

Carrie scrambled up into the passenger seat of the truck. "One last stop!"

Groceries, she meant. Not a lot -- their dorm fridges were small -- but he wanted to pick up at least some snacks and breakfast foods. And he wanted to get rodent-proof containers for the food; Carrie had also commented on the signs of mice in her room. Plus he needed laundry soap, toiletries, and cleaning supplies.

He drove half a block to the grocery store, then suggested, "I'll give you a list and the money if you'll go in and shop. I'll watch our stuff."

She nodded, and the list was quickly accomplished. Carrie hurried inside and he sat down crosslegged on the truck's tailgate, enjoying the warm afternoon sun. Seacouver's weather was pleasant at the end of summer, and a nice change from Tokyo's stifling mugginess.

He wondered if she had never been allowed to shop by herself by her parents, because she'd given him a surprised look at the suggestion. Well, he could watch the entrance to the store from outside and he hardly thought any bad guys would mess with her during the after-work rush at a grocery store.

When he felt the buzz of another Immortal he looked up, and saw MacLeod exiting the store. Kenshin waved and Mac, carrying a bag of groceries, headed his way. The older Immortal grasped his hand in greeting and said, "So, how's the freshman doing?"

Kenshin grinned. "It's going to be fun, I think. How's the dojo?"

"Good. Are you still coming by Friday?" Mac had invited him over for dinner, with several other Immortal friends.

Kenshin nodded. "Care if I bring Carrie?"

"Sure." MacLeod said. Then, providing that he'd seen her inside, and probably talked to her already, he added, "She's certainly all grown up."

"And you're four hundred years older than she is," Kenshin glared.

MacLeod smirked. "Girl like that? Makes me feel twenty ..."

"Touch her and _die, _Highlander," Kenshin said, eyes narrowing. He was, mostly, joking, and MacLeod knew him well enough to realize it. However, he was only teasing because MacLeod wasn't really serious. He might be a lot less amused if MacLeod didn't mind his manners.

Mac held his hands up defensively. "Easy, Ken. I'll let you have first crack ..."

Kenshin sighed. "There's weirdness there, Mac. Technically, I'm her uncle -- I was married to her aunt."

"By marriage." Mac pointed out. "Both of us are old and well traveled enough to remember times and places in the world where that wouldn't be an obstacle."

"Feh." Kenshin shook his head. "She's not interested, anyway. And I'm not sure I am. There's other issues there. She's a good friend, though."

"Hmm."

"By the way, is Richie going to be there Friday?"

"Yeah." MacLeod said. "He wouldn't miss it. -- And Danny, too. You remember the kid ..."

"Who I threatened with a sword, yes, I remember," Kenshin said, with mostly resignation. He was very afraid that he'd ruined any chance for friendship with the boy -- and in a past life, the boy had been Yahiko and had been practically his son. It hurt and it was largely due to his own stupidity that Danny thought it was a hot-tempered barbarian. "He's what, eighteen now?"

However, Danny and Richie and Carrie all in the same place ... there was an odd feeling of _completion_ there, like things were falling into place. He was very interested in how this would play out.

"Yeah. And he's attending Seacouver U this year too. I figured it'd be smart to clue him in that you're working undercover to protect Carrie." MacLeod sat down on the tailgate of the truck next to Kenshin. "He's a good kid -- I think we can trust him to keep his mouth shut."

"Does he know about us?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Mac explained, "Richie accidentally cut his hand up with a power saw and Danny saw him heal. Richie decided it was best to tell the kid the whole story."

"And he's kept the secret?"

"Yeah. He surprised me, I'll tell you what."

Kenshin wasn't at all shocked that Danny had proven to be more than just a tough street kid. "What's he going to school for?"

"Criminal justice. He wants to become a cop."

"Good," Kenshin said, approvingly.

MacLeod nodded, apparently unsurprised by Kenshin's interest in a boy he had met only twice. Well, Kenshin was well aware that Mac had read his Watchers' file. Mac knew a fair bit about him and his tendency to help children. "So, Ken, any chance I could talk you into a bit of sparring?"

Kenshin considered the request. His primary objection to sparring with other swordsmen was that he didn't want to teach anyone Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu. However, Mac was a talented swordsman in his own right, and he had his own school of training. Additionally, Kenshin knew his own skills would be kept sharp by crossing swords with someone who would keep him on his toes. He'd fought with him in the past for exactly that reason.

Kenshin knew he _had _to train with other swordsmen if he wanted to keep his own skills sharp. It was best if he was selective and picked people like MacLeod, who he trusted, for those matches.

He agreed, after a moment more careful consideration. "If I can bring Carrie by for that as well. I'd like to see her spar with someone before I ever work out with her -- Soujiro says she's good, but I've never seen her fight and I don't know much about what he's taught her. She's not built right for his school; she's too tall and not powerful enough."

"I can spar with her, if you want, or we can pair her off with Amanda." He added, after a moment, "I will say that I've never approved of telling pre-Immortals what they are in advance. I'm surprised it's worked out so well for her. Joe says Souji's watcher describes her as very stable and level-headed, though he says she has a huge temper."

Kenshin nodded. _I could tell you stories about that temper._ "And I think because her father is Immortal, and she knew of Immortals anyway, it's easier for her. And I envy Souji -- he won't have to watch his daughter grow old and die."

"Mm."

"You ever adopt kids, Mac?"

"No." MacLeod said, somewhat uncomfortably. "Except for the odd Immortal I mentored. Like Richie."

"I had two daughters and four sons, plus Yahiko. Looking back, I often wish I'd adopted Yahiko." Kenshin leaned back, resting his hands in the truck bed behind him. "I was young myself then ... but I watched all of them grow old and die. I would have given anything to have them alive, still, with me."

__

Chiyoko, he thought silently, of the Immortal almost-daughter he had lost not to death but to a miscalculation on his part. She was alive, still, but it would never be the same between them. They hadn't spoken to each other in a few years -- they simply had nothing to say to each other, having mutually agreed to let the past lie unspoken. His attempts at _casual _conversation had been politely rebuffed, and neither of them were inclined to talk of deep and weighty matters for long.

"You haven't adopted any more since the 1800's, thought?" Mac asked, curiously.

"Not formally. There've been a few kids who have lived with me because they weren't getting along with their parents, or because they had better opportunities for education if they stayed with me, but becoming a father to them? No." Kenshin smiled. "I love children and wouldn't mind another family, but kids need a mother and a father. I'm not sure I could raise them by myself successfully."

"I could set you up with a woman I know ..."

Kenshin snorted. "No, thank you."

"She's pretty."

"No, Mac. But thank you."

"She knows about us. She's Joe's granddaughter ..."

"His _granddaughter?" _Kenshin said, vaguely surprised. "How old is he?"

Mac suddenly looked ... Tired. "Too old, Ken. He's been retired for years. The granddaughter is running his bar." MacLeod stood up, then, waving vaguely at his bag of groceries. "Ice cream. I've got to go before it melts. See you Friday."

---------------

Kenshin bumped his room's door open with his hip and then backed through carrying the flat panel TV in its box with his new rice cooker balanced on top.

"Oh! Let me help you with that!" Sandy was at his desk; he jumped to his feet and snagged the rice cooker. He carried it to the counter next to the room's tiny sink, and then said. "Sweet! A TV!"

Kenshin put the TV down on his desk. "I've got a bunch more stuff in my truck. Could I impose on you to help bring it up?"

"Oh, sure." Sandy reached a hand out, flipped a drawing tablet shut -- Kenshin caught a brief glimpse of a half-finished figure of a girl -- and then stood and appraised the TV for a moment. "Wow. Nice."

"It's small," Kenshin said, "But so's the room. I got some wireless headphones, too, so if one of us wants to watch and the other to sleep, we won't bother each other, that we won't."

"You'll let me use it? Cool!"

Kenshin pulled the door open and gestured for Sandy to go on through. "Certainly, I will. It would be rude not to."

Downstairs, in front of the dorm, Carrie was talking to someone -- Kenshin saw wiry shoulders and close-cropped dark hair from behind. The boy had one hand on Kenshin's truck and an aggressive stance that was fully matched by Carrie's defensive body language.

"I don't know what gave you that idea," Carrie said, voice carrying to them as they stepped through the doors. Her arms were folded and she met the man's eyes with a defiant glare.

It was Shannon, Kenshin saw, as he approached a little closer. Shannon responded, "Meg told me you were looking for a date for Friday night ..."

"I have a date," Carrie said, "and I'm not interested in one with you!"

"Oh yeah, with who?" Shannon said, his tone far too demanding for Kenshin's taste. "Meg said you didn't have a boyfriend and you were looking for one."

"Well, Meg's wrong!" Carrie sounded genuinely pissed.

"Oh, do you have a boyfriend?" Shannon frowned. "Funny your best friend doesn't know about it."

"No! I don't _want _a boyfriend!" Carrie sounded very close to snapping. Kenshin wasn't sure if she was about to burst into tears or about to try to kill the boy. Or both. His Kaoru would have done the young man physical harm by this point, but this wasn't Kaoru. He honestly wasn't sure what would happen, but he figured he needed to defuse the confrontation -- it would only make matters worse with Shannon if she exploded at him.

"Besides," he said smoothly, pitching his voice to carry the last twenty feet to Shannon, "she has plans with me on Friday."

Shannon turned around rapidly, then scowled when he saw Kenshin approaching. Doubtfully, he said, "With you?"

"Aa." _Why the doubt, little boy? I tell you, girls like the hair._

Shannon glanced back at Carrie. Kenshin could read his mind easily: _What's a gorgeous girl like that doing with a scarred, effeminate little shrimp of a foreign student?_

Carrie really did have the stunning good looks of a model. She was the sort of girl one expected to find hanging off the arm of the biggest jock in school -- not dating a midget ninety-eight pound weakling who was several inches shorter than she was. Kenshin grinned at Shannon's expression and decided he was more amused than annoyed. _Time to play the fool. This should be fun._ He was more than guy enough to appreciate Shannon's discomfiture. By apparently beating him at the get-a-date-with-Carrie game he'd just threatened Shannon's machismo; Shannon was the sort of guy who thought that way, that dating was a form of competition.

"That's right!" Carrie said, jumping on the excuse Kenshin had provided her, "We're going out with friends!"

"Aw. That's not a date. I could show you a date. I have tickets to a concert ..." Shannon start to say, and Kenshin cut him off.

"But she's going out with me, that she is." Kenshin stood next to Carrie. She slipped her fingers into the crook of his arm; he could feel raw tension in her muscles. Cheerfully, he offered, "But we could use some help carrying stuff upstairs and then we're probably going to go get dinner in the cafeteria if you want to join us."

Shannon frowned, glanced at his watch, and said, "I've got to go."

Sandy, who'd watched the whole thing in silence, snickered after Shannon was gone. "That guy's an ass. My brother's had trouble with him since he enrolled last year. Brandon's gay, and he's the biggest homophobe in the world."

Kenshin hesitated before growing serious and saying, "He's hurting, I think."

"My brother?" Sandy shook his head. "Nah."

"No, Shannon. Anyone who acts that ... bullyish ... is hurting inside. I don't know why, but he is."

"He wouldn't take no for an answer," Carrie shuddered. He could feel waves of turmoil rolling off of her. It pissed him off. "I can't believe you offered to eat dinner with him!"

"I offered," Kenshin said, "because he's hurting. And Carrie -- thank you for not exploding at him."

"I'd have hit him," she hunched her shoulders. "I got arrested a couple of times as a teenager for hitting people."

__

She grew up in a different world, Kenshin realized. It was a lot less acceptable to assault a classmate in the twenty-first century, even if the blows were richly deserved. Vaguely, he remembered Akane telling him something about the arrests, too -- Carrie had dealt with bullying by beating the bullies up, but the parents had then called the cops. Carrie had never mentioned the incidents to him and he hadn't asked; it fell under the heading of, _If she wants to talk about it, she'll bring it up._

He glanced after Shannon's back. There was something a little familiar about the boy. He wasn't sure if it was deja vu caused by a lifetime of seeing similar young men, or something more. _The level of anger, the acting out ... I've seen it so many times before. He's a young man who's hurting very much inside, and who _has _been hurt._

Kenshin mulled the problem that was Shannon over in his head. _I wonder if I can reach him?_

He would try, he decided. He added to Carrie, "I'm glad you didn't hit him. I suspect he's been hurt a lot in his life. That sort of temperament generally means somebody had a pretty tough childhood."

Sandy scoffed, "He's the scion of one of the wealthiest families in the entire province. His father's a multi-millionaire. Old snooty money."

"Sandy, just because someone's wealthy doesn't mean they had a fairy tale life," Kenshin responded, gently.

"He's horrible to my brother," Sandy said, stubbornly. "I can't forgive him for that."

__

I have forgiven people for crimes far worse than a bit of hazing, Kenshin thought, but didn't say. Instead, he changed the subject. "Let's get this stuff up to our rooms. Then we can go get something to eat; I don't know about you two, but I'm getting hungry."

----------------

The cafeteria was loud, noisy, and the food was bad. Kenshin picked at his fried chicken, which was overcooked and weirdly seasoned. He had already established that the mashed potatoes were out of a box and the corn on the cob had been previously frozen. The jello desert had canned fruit in it and coconut flakes, which he found a bit offputting. He was not a fan of jello to begin with.

"This is worse than _my _cooking" Carrie was peeling the skin off her chicken. He wasn't sure if that was because she was watching her calories or if the herbs mixed into the breading were as odd to an American palate as they were to a Japanese one. The crust was heavy on the garlic and rosemary.

__

As far as your cooking goes ... that remains to be seen. Kenshin, a veteran of decades of Kaoru's cooking misadventures, was skeptical of that statement. The cafeteria food was edible, if not exactly his haute cuisine.

"Brandon!" Sandy suddenly waved.

Kenshin turned around to see who Sandy was hailing. A young man on crutches was headed there way. They were the sort of crutches that had hand grips, and his bare legs -- he was wearing shorts -- were withered and strapped into braces.

__

Paralysis of some kind, Kenshin thought. Polio was no longer a common threat in this modern world, but either the man had a spinal injury or he had been born that way. Spina bifida, Kenshin guessed, could be a possibility. Still, he moved with surprising grace -- and he had his dinner dangling from a bag clenched in his teeth, having apparently solved the problem of how to transport dinner to a table while on crutches by requesting it 'to go' in a plastic bag.

Brandon neatly slid into the seat next to his brother, leaned the crutches against the table next to them, and dropped his bag of dinner onto the table. "Hi. I'm Brandon."

"Hi," Carrie said. "Carrie Seta. This is my friend Kenny Myojin."

Brandon grinned. "Sandy said you were cute."

"Thank you," Carrie said, uncertainly.

Kenshin was acutely aware of where Brandon's eyes were, and they weren't on Carrie. He flopped his head onto his arms, buried his face, and groaned. "Oro! Carrie, I don't think he means you."

"Eek! No way!" Carrie squeaked. He knew she was blushing without even looking up at her. _Young, _he diagnosed, though he was also turning scarlet.

Brandon giggled mischievously. Sandy growled something that wasn't entirely coherent, but contained the words, "Brandon!" and, " Kick your ass!"

Kenshin peered up at Brandon through the fall of his bangs. Brandon grinned at him, teasingly. Kenshin pointed a finger at him and said, "I'm straight, bishi boy, that I am."

"Bishi boy!" Sandy, who had been taking a sip of his drink, snorted soda out his nose. Frantically, spluttering, he grabbed for a napkin and dabbed at the stains on his shirt. Wheezing, he said, "Oh, god, that's _so _true."

"It is not!"

"Yes it is!"

"I see _two _bishis at this table," Carrie said, unexpectedly, chiming in.

Kenshin flopped his face back down into his arms. "Oro!"

"Why, from a lady, I'll take that as a compliment," Brandon said, flirtatiously. He batted his eyes while taking his dinner out of the bag -- the cafeteria ladies had packaged everything in little plastic cups for him, so it wouldn't spill between the cafeteria line and the table.

"Oh, God, Carrie," Sandy rolled his eyes. "You just created a monster. You have _no _idea of the monster you just created. It's Frankenstein, Godzilla, and Alien all rolled into one. _Don't _compliment him on his looks or you'll never get rid of him."

"What?" Brandon said, innocently. "Why would anyone want to get rid of me?"

He _was _a very good looking young man -- like his brother, he had very blond hair, but his was longer. It fell loose to his shoulders, framing a face that was more pretty than handsome. Blue eyes twinkled with merriment. Kenshin liked him immediately, despite the hazing.

There was also a nagging sense of recognition.

Brandon added, in a more serious tone, "Kenny, my brother says you're a film studies student. What courses are you taking?"

"Beginning film-making, English 101, set design, and geometry one," Kenshin said, "and track. I'm on the track and field team."

He still remembered the recruiter's look of naked astonishment when Kenshin had broken a high school record at the pole vault. Sub-five-foot-tall guys were just not supposed to vault like that. And then he'd shown them how fast he could sprint, as well. _Olympic potential_ had been whispered. He had been courted by multiple schools; Seacouver was the only one that had offered degrees in both Carrie's chosen field of medicine and his in film studies.

"I'm in my third year of the degree," Brandon started picking off the breading on his chicken. "But I'm taking geometry 101 also. What teacher?"

A quick comparison of notes established that they shared the same class three days a week. Brandon grinned. "Good. I hear that Reilly's an interesting professor."

"If you need any help, Ken-nii," Carrie said, "I can help you with the math."

He gave her a _look_.

In Japanese, she said, "What? I heard about your grades in math from my cousins."

Kenshin dropped his head onto his arms again. In English, because he didn't want to be rude to the Western kids, he said, "I'm _not _good at math, this is true."

Brandon snorted. "Join the club. We can share the pain."

He glanced up. Brandon raised an eyebrow and said, "... and anything else you want to share ..."

"Knock it off," Sandy swatted his brother on the back of the head. "Sorry, Kenny, Brandon does this to all my friends. He's just trying to get a rise out of you and piss me off."

"A rise in more ways than one ..." Brandon purred and waggled his eyebrows.

Sandy turned bright red and smacked his brother upside the head hard enough that the sound of the slap turned heads several tables away. "Brandon!"

Carrie burst out into absolutely embarrassed giggles, and covered her face with her hands. Kenshin, who was a hundred and sixty five years old in the fall, and who had been hit on by men more times than he could count -- and possibly, more often than women hit on him -- simply snorted an appreciative laugh at the pun. Then, without offense, he said, "Sorry, Brandon. Rumors to the contrary, you're just not my type."

"Aw, damn. Well, if you ever change your mind ..."

Sandy swatted him again.

"Owe!" Brandon objected, to his brother. "Don't hit the cripple!"

Sandy held his hand up, threatening more violence.

"Okay! Uncle! Uncle!" Brandon didn't sound frightened at all. His eyes were incredibly merry; he was truly enjoying himself.

"Maa, maa," Kenshin said, with a mental shrug. If Brandon wanted to engage in a bit of bawdy banter, Kenshin was up for it. "Sandy, don't hit your brother. I think he might like it."

"Ewwww!" Sandy recoiled.

Brandon smirked. "I'd rather it come from your roommate, mind."

Kenshin snickered.

Carrie choked on her mashed potatoes and blushed even harder. Kenshin reached a hand out, patted her on the back.

"Brandon, one of these days, somebody's going to take you the wrong way and _hurt _you," Sandy was moved to worry aloud. "Seriously. You don't even know Kenny! He could secretly be a neo-nazi skinhead."

Brandon regarded Kenshin thoughtfully. "He's mighty deep undercover if he is."

Carrie squawked, then stuck her tongue out and stared crosseyed at the tip. Kenshin assumed she'd just bitten it, and absently passed her his soda to drink -- she was finished with hers.

"You know what I mean!" Sandy insisted. "You don't know he's a friend!"

"Maa, maa," Kenshin said, "Brandon, he does have a valid point. You don't know me. But," he added, "I'm also not offended."

"I knew you wouldn't be," Brandon shrugged, "I'm good at judging people, Kenshin -- I knew that when I saw you." He grinned, revealing two deep dimples on either side of his mouth.

__

Kenshin.

Kenshin tried to remember if Carrie had used his real name. She hadn't. He met Carrie's eyes and demanded in Japanese, "How did he know my real name?"

"I don't know," she looked as confused as he did.

Brandon corrected himself, "Kenny. Sorry. I don't know where Kenshin came from ... that's weird."

Kenshin, with sudden surmise, turned his attention fully on Brandon. It was his turn to choke. Carrie passed the soda back to him. _Byron. That's Byron. And if anyone ever deserved to be reborn in the modern era, it's Byron!_

The last time Kenshin had seen Byron it had been at the tail end of the Victorian era in England. Byron had needed to be so careful; his naturally kind, outgoing nature had been stifled by the need to hide half his self away from all but his closest friends and family. This time around, Byron had been born into a world where he would not be considered mentally ill, or a criminal, for being gay -- though he would still deal with prejudice and cruelty. Despite that, Kenshin had no doubt that Byron would thrive in this modern world.

Byron had come from an absolutely horrific upbringing and yet had still been one of the kindest, gentlest people Kenshin had ever known. In the years that Kenshin had known him he had grown from a confused, scared, hurting young man to a beloved 'uncle' to Kenshin's grandchildren. And Kenshin was surprised by how much he missed Byron himself.

Slow surmise made him turn his eyes on his roommate, Byron's brother. Sandy met his gaze with a somewhat confused expression. Behind that confusion lay a soul he really should have recognized immediately, and he felt bad for not doing so. Perhaps it was that he just hadn't been expecting it, hadn't been looking for him, and certainly had not believed he would ever find his own son reborn.

__

Kenji, Kenshin thought. _Everyone I loved, everyone who's ever loved me ... they're all coming back to me. Here. Now. In the modern world._

Why?

"You okay?" Sandy said.

"Et-to. Yeah."

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

Kenshin glanced around the table, at his three companions. _I'm seeing three of them. _"I'm fine, that I am." _I'm good, actually. Better than I've been in years._

------------

Kenshin's cell phone rang later that evening, as he was folding up and putting away his new clothes. He was alone in the room; Sandy was taking a shower. He glanced at the display, saw a London number, and answered it, "Moshimoshi, Georgie-kun."

"Hey, Pops," George Trevor's irreverent response made Kenshin grin. George was his great-grandson; the man was pushing ninety now, but still mentally sharp. Kenshin had just seen him three months before, and had lost three sequential games of Go to George, much to his chagrin.

"What's up?" Kenshin folded a tie-died t-shirt up and tucked it into the appropriate drawer. The t-shirt had offended Carrie's sense of style but he had purchased it anyway. He liked bright colors, and also knew full well that if he dressed flamboyantly people were more likely to accept the occasional bit of eccentric behavior from him.

"This isn't a social call, I'm afraid." George sounded apologetic. "Got a kid in trouble."

"Is it bad?" Kenshin's heart sank. If he had to go play the hero and rescue one of the family's children he would, but it would play havoc with his school schedule. Plus, he was worried about leaving Carrie alone.

"It's my grand-niece, Morgan Trevor." George sounded rather worried. "She's witness to a murder -- gang violence -- and the little perp's rich and entitled -- you know the type, the disgustingly wealthy country club set -- and he threatened to have her killed. We just need a place to stick her that he can't find her until the trial."

"Oh, sure," Kenshin blinked, thinking fast. "How old is she?"

"Sixteen."

"She can't stay in the dorm here with me, she's not a student. I'd rather not move _out _of the dorm, though I will if I have to -- it's just that Carrie's attached to staying in a dorm room." Kenshin ran a hand over his head. "Tell you what: I'll call around to some friends, see what I can turn up as far as a place for her to stay goes. When's the trial?"

"At least six months from now. The bastard who did it is pretty wealthy; his lawyers are pulling every stalling tactic they can think of."

"Lovely." Kenshin scratched his jaw. "Go ahead and put her on a plane, I'll deal with it on my end as far as finding her a place to stay."

"Thanks, Pops. I told her mother you'd help."

"Of course I will. She's one of my grand-grands," Kenshin said, though he was wincing about the complication to his schedule and his life. College was going to be hard enough without babysitting a teenager that he didn't even know.

"Well, neither she nor her parents know the details about you, Pops. Remember, you decided not to trust my sister's kids with your secret because they were bratty little whiners? It's that line of the family. And I'd be careful clueing her in. I don't entirely trust this kid ... something about her rubs me the wrong way, and I'm not sure she's told the whole story to the cops." His gravelly voice was full of hesitation. "And they're rather ... disrespectful to me. I don't mind, exactly, but it bugs me. I wouldn't inflict her on you if I didn't really think she was in danger."

"Thanks for the warning," Kenshin said. Actually, he had decided not to tell those children what he was because, even in their early teens, they had struck him as dishonorable. He hadn't had anything to do with that line of the family in more than seventy years. The girl, then, would be either George's grand-niece or grand-grand niece. "What did you tell her about me?"

"That you're Kenny Myojin, a friend of the family. I used the cover story you came up with for school. I thought it best -- that is okay, right?"

"Aa, it's fine. It reduces the chance for confusion." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "How determined do you think the bad guys will be to find her?"

"Possibly, very. She's the only witness and they're wealthy, so they have resources."

"Okay. I'll keep that in mind when finding her a place to stay. I've a few Immortal friends here in the city; they may have some ideas."

"Are you sure it's okay just to put her on a plane?" George asked. "She's got a passport."

"Yeah, it's fine. E-mail me with the arrival time on her flight and I'll be there. And send me all the details on what you know and who I'm watching out for. I'll figure something out."

"You are amazing," George said, with feeling. "There's a flight out tomorrow that arrives on Friday morning -- I'll try to get her on that one."

Kenshin snorted. He didn't feel amazing; he felt obligated. "This is far from the first time I've handled something like this, though it's usually the Sagaras that call me for help. I swear, every generation at least one or two of them tangle with the yakuza." Kenshin scratched his jaw, remembering a few of his more memorable adventures with Sano's descendents. Atsuko had sworn that their pugnacious, hot tempered attitudes were genetic in nature. Kenshin was almost inclined to agree.

"Thanks, Pops. I'm going to let you go then, and tell her mom."

"Sounds like a plan. And Georgie-kun -- I'd prefer it quite a bit if your next call was a social one, that I would. You owe me a few." Kenshin was teasing.

George's bark of laughter was highly amused. "I promise!"

"Good boy." Kenshin's grin persisted for a moment after he hung up. But then it faded. And he was surprised by just how resentful he felt of this intrusion into his life.

__

I swore oaths to all of them that I would always look after their children, Kenshin thought, grimly. _I must help this child. And she truly needs me, if what George says is correct._


	3. Chapter 3

MacLeod's warm, slightly accented voice, held all sorts of amusement. "Sixteen year old girl, hiding from bad guys. And you want _me _to help?"

Kenshin's grin was broad and genuine. He spoke into his cell phone while seated in the privacy of his truck, out of earshot of anyone that might hear and find the conversation out of character. "Mac, you're as big of a boy scout as I am, that you are. Of _course _I'm going to ask you. I just need a safe house to put her in for a few months until the trial. Do you have any suggestions?"

"As a matter of fact, ask Richie. He's got a spare bedroom. If you think _I _have boy scout tendencies, you should see Richie when he gets in the mood for it. Besides, he owes me for the number of times he's dragged me _into _one of his rescues."

Kenshin hesitated a long, long moment.

"Richie'll behave himself, don't worry." MacLeod misinterpreted Kenshin's pause for something very different. "Seriously. The guy thrives on playing the hero. I think he must have been Rambo in a past life. And I'm way more of a letch than he ever is."

Kenshin snorted. _Not Rambo, but something very close._ "It's not that, Mac. It's just ..." _how do I explain that the last time I asked Richie to be the hero for me, he was my best friend and he died? _"... I'll talk to him. Thanks."

"Tell him I said to." MacLeod seemed vastly amused by this.

"Thank you, Mac. It's a good suggestion."

-----------

Richie Ryan answered the phone with a happy, "Yo, Kenshin my man! I was wondering when you were going to call me!"

Kenshin's grin threatened to split his face at that happy answer to his call. "Hey, Richie. Sorry I didn't call sooner ..."

"I know, I know, you've been busy with the whole college life. Babes, booze, and ..."

"Hardly," Kenshin interrupted, while thinking, _the only babe in question is purely a platonic friend, and probably always will be._

Oblivious to his distracted thought, Richie growled, "Aw, you're no fun. If I were going to college, that'd be the best part."

Kenshin snorted and forced himself to pay attention to the conversation. "You're not that shallow, Richie."

"Says who?"

"Says MacLeod, who just assured me that you're not a letch," Kenshin said, amused.

"Uh-oh. This isn't a social call, is it?" Richie sobered, "What's up, Ken?"

"Mac reminded me that you have a guest bedroom. I have a teenaged girl in need of a place to hide for a few months. She's a witness to a crime and the bad guys are after her. I know it's a lot to ask, but if she turns out to be trouble, I'll take over -- I'll get an apartment and watch her myself."

Silence, from Richie.

"She's one of the kids I'm sworn to protect," Kenshin said, unhappily. "She's sixteen, Richie. I wouldn't ask, but my hands are already full with Carrie and I wasn't expecting this to crop up."

"You sure know how to ask for big favors, don't you?" Richie said.

Kenshin winced. "You don't have to say yes, that you don't, Richie."

"No, no, it's okay. I'll just put a complete stranger up in my ..." Richie sighed, suddenly, and before Kenshin could withdraw the request, changed his response to question. "You know I was a foster kid, right?"

"Et-to ... no." Though he'd guessed Richie's early life had been hard.

"Meh. Kid in trouble. Right. Been there, done that. Okay, fine. I'll help. I've _been _that scared kid in trouble."

Kenshin let a breath out he had not known he was holding. "I owe you a very large favor, Richie, that I do. And you have my deepest gratitude."

"From you? I'll take that seriously." Richie was teasing.

"She's supposed to be on a flight arriving Friday morning." Kenshin stretched out in his truck seat, feeling relieved. He trusted Richie, on multiple levels -- both to behave himself and to be suitably wary and cautious. And Richie was Immortal and a very well trained fighter; he would be formidable protection for the girl. "I'll pick her up, and figure out what she needs as far as toiletries or clothes, and get her something to occupy her time ... books, I suppose, or video games ..."

"... I have video games ..."

"... I'll find out what she likes. I'll tell her she's expected to clean and do chores, too. And mind what you say. That's only fair. And I'll chip in for her room and board ..."

"Ah, I don't need money from you, Ken," Richie said, sounding vaguely offended.

Kenshin, father of teenagers in the past, just snorted. "Try telling me that _after _she's lived with you for a few weeks. I'll give her some money to spend on necessities, too. George says that her family's not very well off."

-----------------

Later that night, Kenshin lay awake in the soft Western bed. The mattress had a faint odor to it; he thought the last person to use this bed had been overly fond of aftershave.

Sandy snorted, twitched, then rolled over in the other bed. It was late, and it was very quiet, other than Sandy's soft snores. Kenshin knew he should sleep, but he was wired. It had been a long day, and he had so much to think about.

__

Kenji. Byron. The two of them had re-entered his life.

He was convinced that none of this was coincidence. He wasn't overly religious, but he figured some divine force had decided that they all needed to come back together. That worried him; likely, there was a reason for it. What, then? Some great cosmic save-the-world battle? _That _was enough to freak him out simply thinking about it. He really preferred to keep his heroism small scale, thank you very much. Saving the people within his sight was much easier than tackling global problems.

__

I've never tackled a global problem. Don't want to start. I'm not Superman.

And on top of that, he had class to worry about. And he knew it was going to be a struggle because in honest truth he had very little education. The kids today had gone to school for thirteen years or more before entering college, depending on when they started preschool. Kenshin had not had any formal education past the age of eight, when his parents had died. Hiko had taught him a bit more about reading and writing and a little math. And he'd sat in on classes with his children, later.

But since the late 1800's he'd had no formal education ... just a sizable bump of curiosity and a library card and, later, internet access. He knew there were huge gaps in his knowledge of the world despite his attempts to educate himself.

Taking three heads several years ago had helped him speak English better ... but he still struggled to read it. He could do so, with difficulty, but it would never be easy. It just didn't feel natural.

__

And I'm going to a Western college. I think that Atsuko was right when she called me masochistic.

He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. It was a full moon outside -- the light shone almost as brilliant as dawn through the window. He knew he wasn't going to get any sleep, and when he moved, Sandy snuffled faintly and then looked up.

"Sorry, not used to sharing a room with anyway," Sandy apologized -- for what, waking up?

Kenshin sat up. He was surprised that Sandy had heard him move. However, Kenji had been reasonably good at sensing ki, perhaps that was a talent this young man also had. Kenji had never used those abilities in a serious fight, Kenshin recalled with fondness, but he had been exceptionally good at understanding people. "I'm sorry for waking you. I'm going to go take a walk."

"Mmkay," Sandy buried his face in his pillow and yanked the cover over his head.

Kenji had been able to sleep through anything, Kenshin remembered. But Kenji had been raised in the chaotic environment of the dojo and had reacted by developing an utterly unflappable personality. He could sleep through a war because, quite often, it sounded like one was going on in the dojo. He didn't know anything about Sandy's upbringing.

Kenshin dressed quickly, pocketed his passkey for the electronic door locks, and then after a quick look to make sure Sandy wasn't watching him, he grabbed his sword from under the bed as well. Then he slipped out into the hall. He could sense dozens of sleeping people, one couple making love -- and a highly annoyed third person in the same room -- and several more people like himself, still awake and mildly agitated.

Carrie was awake; he contemplated knocking on her door, but didn't. Meg was asleep.

The halls were empty and dark, however. He made his way down the stairs to the lobby and slipped outside. Past the dorm there was a grassy area with tall trees and picnic tables. Kenshin headed there, thinking he would watch the moon until he grew tired enough to sleep. He was close enough to the dorm to sense if anything happened.

Someone was already there, however -- a tall figure, seated at a table, _ki _so quiet, and body so still, that Kenshin didn't even notice him until he was very close and the boy had already seen him.

"Beautiful night," Brandon said.

"Mm." Kenshin sat down next to him.

"Sorry for hassling you, earlier. Sometimes I get carried away."

"It's quite alright," Kenshin stretched his legs out and stared up at the moon. "You were testing me, that you were."

A smile, from Brandon. "My brother likes you. He nearly ripped me a new one for harassing you."

Kenshin glanced over at him. "I like your brother, so we're even."

"You're an odd man," Brandon held his hands up to the moon, long callused fingers silhouetted by the cool light. "You seem older than you are."

Kenshin coughed. "I've heard that before."

Brandon shifted uncomfortably. "So. I'm out here because I can't sleep; my back is killing me. What brings you out here?"

"Your back ...?"

Brandon made a dismissive gesture, a flip of one hand in the air, as if waving Kenshin's concerns away. "Story of my life. If you haven't noticed," he flashed Kenshin a grin, teeth very white in the moonlight, "I've got spina bifida. My back always hurts from the strain of the crutches and braces and stuff. It's worst at night."

"I'm sorry."

Brandon shrugged. "I've got an appointment with a chiropractor tomorrow. Your story?"

"Oh. Nothing major, just worried about classes." Kenshin folded his arms and propped one foot on top of the other. Talking to Brandon felt familiar, and easy, even if he couldn't tell Brandon the whole story about why he had insomnia. "And other things, but classes are a good part of it. I'm _not _a scholar and I'm honestly not sure if I can pull this off."

"Well, if you need any help, let me know. I'm no athlete, but I'm all sorts of geek." Brandon fiddled with his crutches, playing with one of the leather straps that he slipped his arms through. "So. Are you and Carrie dating?"

"Carrie? No." Kenshin shook his head. "She's a good friend, but that's it."

He expected Brandon to make an offer of _wanna be my boyfriend_? or something similar. But Brandon simply said, "Sometimes, good friends make the best boyfriends -- or girlfriends, as the case may be."

"True," Kenshin agreed. _I've been friends before I was a lover with every single one of my wives. _Out of curiosity he asked,"Brandon, do you have a boyfriend?"

Again, he expected a teasing, _Why, are you looking for one_? He'd pretty much set himself up for it. But it didn't come. Brandon bit his lip for a moment, then shook his head. "No," he said, simply. "I don't."

There was pain there, Kenshin thought, but Brandon didn't elaborate. More significantly to Kenshin, he didn't complain, either -- though Kenshin had a good idea that _dating _was going to be unusually difficult for this young man. _Ah, Shinya, where are you when I need you?_ After a long moment, Kenshin said, "I was planning on going to breakfast tomorrow, at the Denny's up the road, with Carrie -- and your brother, if he wants to come. Want to come with us?"

That earned him a bright smile. "It's a date."

Kenshin snickered. "In your dreams."

Brandon just grinned.

-----------------

At eight the next morning Kenshin padded down the hall to Carrie's room and knocked on the door. Meg opened it, and said, "She's in the shower. But I can entertain you for a bit ..."

"Oro!" Meg's leer left nothing to the imagination as far as what she meant by _entertain_. Kenshin found himself blushing scarlet. What was _with _these people? Was something in the water here, to make everyone's hormones rage? He said, "That is quite alright, Miss Yazzi. I'll meet you two downstairs, if you don't mind."

She giggled.

Kenshin cupped a hand at the base of his skull, regarded her with some alarm for a moment, then stuttered, "S-see you in a bit," and fled.

__

Oye! He thought, _She's worse than Megumi ever was! Megumi was nice to me, she just harassed Kaoru all the time _about _me!_

Well, he thought, as he realized the difference, _Meg doesn't feel she owes me her life multiple times over. There's none of the sense of obligation, or deep respect, that Megumi had towards me. She just sees me as a cute guy and she's vastly amused when I blush._

He decided he was glad of that. He wouldn't wish Megumi's traumatic early life on anyone else.

Sandy was waiting for their next-door neighbor to finish with the shower -- the two rooms shared a bathroom. Kenshin mentioned that he would wait downstairs, then headed off to the lobby.

The lobby had a few chairs and couches in it, and a surprising amount of quality art on the walls. Kenshin was admiring a painting when Brandon said, behind him, "That's a reproduction, but it's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Good morning. You know something about art?" Kenshin wasn't the slightest bit surprised by that. He turned to greet Brandon.

Brandon lowered himself onto one of the couches, and said, "I know a little. Sandy's the artist of the family."

"I saw he'd brought some sketch books." Kenshin sat down next to him. "What time did you get to sleep?"

"Late." Brandon rolled his eyes. "My roommate snores. Also, he short-sheeted my bed."

"That's ... childish."

"Particularly when one has difficulty _making _a bed." He gestured at his legs, face twisted into an annoyed scowl. "I'm not entirely certain he was actually asleep when I came back, either. I'm not sure my roommate situation is going to work out, to tell the honest truth. He's a bit of a prick and I don't think he likes me. Which, I might add, is the story of my life."

__

Well, if you didn't throw your sexuality in everyone's face, kiddo, you probably would have better luck with at least getting along with people, Kenshin thought, but didn't say.

Brandon added, after a moment, "Sandy keeps telling me if I was more discrete about who I am I'd make more friends." He shrugged, helplessly. "But honestly, Ken, I can't hide it. Some guys can, but I can't. Haven't been able to pass for straight since, oh, sixth or seventh grade. _Straight people's _gaydar starts pinging as soon as I walk in the room."

Kenshin snorted a laugh. Brandon was probably right on that assessment. And he guessed the man was venting from experience of _trying _to hide who he was.

"I'm a really, really, lousy actor," Brandon concluded. "And I think I've got a homophobe for a roommate. Just a funny feeling, given the way he keeps glaring at me and the way he flinches every time I so much as say hello. Kenny, what am I supposed to do, stock my dresser drawer with Playboys and wolf-whistle out the window at girls? It wouldn't work; they'd just tell me I'm in denial. And anyway, everyone from last year knows."

Brandon paused, then added, wryly, "I've had three cups of coffee. Can you tell?"

He was significantly more talkative than he had been that night. Kenshin smiled, a bit, thinking that Brandon was also simply more comfortable with him. It was easy to fall into the pattern of mentor and wise elder, and he did so without thought when he asked, "You're understandably upset. What makes you think your roommate doesn't like you, besides the sheets?"

"He won't say two words to me for social conversation." Brandon fidgeted with one of the leather straps on his leg braces. "Seriously. I told him good morning, and he just grunts. But he _does _actually know how to speak English, because he ran a line of tape down the dorm floor and told me none of my stuff better be on his side of the room. Same thing in the bathroom. He even divided the sink in half, and how does that work, I ask you?"

"Oye. Have you spoken to the RA?" That sounded serious, though Kenshin wasn't sure if the roommate was homophobic or just an idiot from the description.

"The RA is Shannon Reilly."

Kenshin _twitched. _That could be a problem, and for the whole floor. Shannon wasn't exactly leadership material, by Kenshin's estimation. "Ah ... we've met. And I see the problem, that I do. I didn't realize that he was the RA."

"I'll try to swap with someone, I guess, but nobody ever wants me as a roommate." Brandon scratched his nose. "I tried for a single room, but they're not offering them this year because of the housing crunch."

"Mmm." Kenshin thought. "Do you get along with your brother?"

"No. Not to share a room." Brandon gave Kenshin a sideways look, surprised that he was apparently offering to swap with Brandon and put up with Brandon's roommate. "Fratricide would happen."

Kenshin thought a moment longer. "I could share with you, if it comes down to that."

He expected teasing for that offer, but he didn't get it. Brandon gave him a surprised look, then shook his head. "No, I won't inflict the Roommate from Hell on Sandy, either. He's my little brother; I sorta feel protective, you know?"

Brandon grabbed a handful of the brace on one leg and yanked that leg up and over the other so he was seated crosslegged. He started adjusting the straps. "Mind, I appreciate the offer. You're cool."

Kenshin smiled. "Glad you think so. I try. -- And there's Shannon now."

The man was descending the stairs two at a time; he spotted them and headed in their direction. "Two peas in a pod," he purred.

Brandon started to bristle, but Kenshin rested a hand on his arm. He wasn't going to get in a fight with Shannon, particularly if he was the resident advisor. In the calmest tone of voice he could muster, Kenshin said, "Can we help you, Mr. Reilly?"

"Your roommate is talking about filing a grievance about you, Brandon," Shannon stood before him with his arms crossed. "Didn't you have problems last year too?"

"Yeah, with you," Brandon shot back. Kenshin's attempts to calm him were clearly having little effect.

"Maa, maa, no need to fight here," Kenshin said, with a strictly internal wince. This wasn't good. "What sort of grievance, Mr. Reilly?"

"_Shannon_. And Brandon's roommate claims he was being ..."

"Being gay? Yes, I am." Brandon said, brightly.

"He said you hit on him," Shannon said. His expression seemed to indicate that the words themselves tasted bad.

"That'd be difficult," Brandon replied, with sarcasm oozing from every word. "Given he's said maybe six words to me in the two days since I moved into my room, aside from the minimum necessary to explain why he was putting a line of tape down the middle of the room."

Shannon shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking highly embarrassed to be having this discussion. "He said it was the way you were looking at him. Brandon, you hit on _everyone_. I've seen you do it. I have an inclination to believe your roommate."

"I'm not that stupid," Brandon said, with dignity. "There is a distinct difference between teasing someone like Kenny, who can take it and give it back in spades, and someone like Michael, who not only can't, but who I also have to live with. I haven't done anything improper, Shannon."

"Maa," Kenshin said, "Shannon, perhaps it would be best if Brandon were moved to another room. I will be perfectly comfortable in sharing a room with Brandon if necessary, but Brandon is worried about his roommate sharing a room with his little brother, so it may take some shuffling of people to accomplish that."

Shannon's brows beetled downwards. "I thought you said you were straight."

"I _am_." Kenshin smiled. "I can also break Brandon in two if he actually tries anything."

Brandon barked a surprised laugh. So did Shannon, who sounded even more shocked than Brandon that Kenshin would tease him in such a way. The difference, Kenshin knew, was that Brandon wasn't offended -- and Shannon probably was.

Shannon said, "No, I don't think that's a good idea."

Kenshin was surprised to see real concern on Shannon's face. Shannon elaborated, "Part of my job is to see that nobody gets hurt. That includes both of you. People will draw the wrong conclusions if you two room together."

"Let them," Kenshin said, calmly. "My friends know the truth. The rest of the world regularly draws the wrong conclusions anyway about me, for multiple reasons."

"Still, you're too little to defend yourself properly, if anyone decided to bash you," Shannon blew a sharp breath out. "Brandon, I'll see what I can do about finding you a new room. Just -- quit being so _obvious_, eh? It may take me a few days, but usually, it's the start of the year and you won't be the only person with roommate trouble. Maybe we can find someone to swap you out with."

Kenshin started to protest the _too little _comment, but Shannnon was already rising. He turned back to Brandon, and added, "Brandon, I _will _take action against you if necessary, if I find out any of this trouble is your doing. I understand you've had plenty of problems before."

"Ouch," Brandon glared after him, and added, once Shannon was out of earshot, "Funny how all the trouble is always _my _fault."

"What happened last year?" Kenshin asked, curious.

Brandon levered himself up with his crutches, then leaned on them. After a long moment, he said, "I got beat up. The school administration decided it was my fault because I'd teased the guy who did the beating."

"Teased ...?"

"Yeah. He called me a faggot and I blew a kiss at him and asked him if he wanted a date." Brandon shook his head. "Stupid, but he pissed me off -- and you should have seen the way he reacted when I did it. It was very funny. But he jumped me in the parking lot that night, him and his buddies."

"Probably not the smartest thing you could have done," Kenshin allowed. "But they shouldn't have beaten you up over it."

"Probably," Brandon snickered, suddenly. "Oh, but you should have seen the look on his face."


	4. Chapter 4

"You know," Kenshin said, to Carrie, as she sleepily clambered into his truck on Friday morning, "You could stay behind. I'm not overly worried about bad guys bothering you in the dorm. There's too many people there."

"Bad guys, always bad guys," Carrie groused. "I _can _take care of myself."

"You don't have a sword," Kenshin pointed out.

"Because Dad won't let me carry one at college. I have the one you gave me back home."

Kenshin actually agreed with that. While he was good at making his sword disappear, Carrie did not have the ability to hide hers with a bit of psychic illusion. If she was caught carrying a _sword _on campus she was likely to get kicked out, and arrested on top of that. Colleges didn't have much tolerance for students carrying concealed weapons. And both he and Soujiro judged the likelihood of anyone attacking her on campus as low, as long as she stayed in busy areas or with him. So she was not carrying a weapon yet.

"Mm. Well, after we pick Morgan up we'll go by MacLeod's place. I'd like to see you spar with someone."

"Are you going to let her see us fight?" Carrie asked. She didn't sound overly enthusiastic about sparring.

"I talked it over with Mac and Richie last night," that had been a long call between the three of them, and he had been impressed by the good ideas that the two of them had come up with -- apparently, he was not the only Immortal with a pathological tendency to play the hero. "The cover story is that we're all martial arts enthusiasts. Which is perfectly true, and will explain any swords she happens to see, that it will."

Carrie put her seatbelt on, then hunched down in the seat. She didn't look happy, or very awake. He offered again, "Are you certain you don't want to stay behind and try to get some more sleep? I can pick you up later, after I find Morgan at the airport."

"I'm fine, Kenshin." She rubbed her eyes, "Meg was hassling me about boys again last night."

Kenshin started his truck and backed out of the parking space. "It really bothers you, doesn't it, when she tries to set you up for dates?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "It makes me want to scream at her to STOP!" Her voice rose to an almost shouting level; she gave him an embarrassed look and said in a more normal tone, "Sorry. I just get so frustrated. She means well, but ..."

"There's no rule you have to date anyone, you know, just because you're in college." He was familiar with that increase in volume; it reminded him so much of Kaoru that it was almost physically painful. Sometimes, Carrie was so different from Kaoru that he couldn't even see the resemblance to his late wife in her eyes ... and sometimes, it was as if she was sitting next to him in the flesh. He had expected her to raise her voice before she had begun to do so.

Kaoru had shouted. Regularly. At everyone. Loudly. He had only worried when Kaoru quit screaming, because then he knew she was beyond annoyed and into truly upset.

"I know," she said, in a small voice, in response to Kenshin's soothing words. Kenshin blinked, as he lost the sense of familiar. Kaoru had never sounded that broken -- and Carrie hadn't, either, the last time he had seen her face to face, years before. He knew something was very wrong in that moment.

"Are you scared what guys will think, when they find out you're an Immortal?" Kenshin asked, as he guided the truck towards the parking lot exit. He hoped she would talk to him, though he resolved not to push the point.

She hugged herself and said, in that same low, almost inaudible, voice, "Maybe. Men scare me, Kenshin."

He glanced over at her, though he didn't have to look at her to sense the anxiety rolling off of her. Her jaw was clenched, and she was staring straight ahead. With concern, he said, "We don't have to talk about this. It's okay. Sometimes talking about hurts is like picking a scab -- it just makes it worse, that it does."

He very well knew that some things were best left unsaid. God forbid anyone force him to talk about some of the things he'd done when not much younger than this woman beside him. He'd go insane. Again. He only kept his sanity by not thinking about or talking about them.

She sighed, and he felt the change in her as she decided to _talk_. "Kenshin, it's ... I tried dating, a couple of times, in high school. It ... teenage guys are such idiots. They ... got pushy ... and I saw Marshall ... flashbacks, you know?"

"Oh." He hadn't been expecting that. Carrie, years ago, had seemed to be just fine after he'd rescued her. He'd expected she would have a meltdown later, but she hadn't seemed overly traumatized. And Kaoru had survived multiple kidnappings without anything worse than a few nightmares. But, he realized, Kaoru had been older -- and had been born in a very different time, and a place, and the situation had been vastly different all around. Neither Jin-e nor Enishi had threatened to rape her, and she had been sixteen and eighteen years old, not thirteen. And in both cases she had somehow ended up with playing a significant role in her own rescue.

Carrie continued, "There was this guy who wouldn't back off right away and I freaked out on him. He was just trying to kiss me, but I didn't want it, and I screamed and hit him -- hard -- and started crying. I'm afraid that'll happen again -- that a guy won't stop when I say 'no'. That's all."

"Oh." He wasn't sure what to say to that.

"I gave him a black eye. He told everyone at school the next day that I was psycho. They believed him. He wasn't a bad guy and I probably did seem psycho." Carrie hunched farther down into the seat. "Then the kids discovered they could upset me by teasing me about boys, or harassing me about sexual things. I ... hit a few kids. Got arrested a couple of times for it, too, when I hit the wrong kids. Nearly got kicked out of school despite having good grades. The only thing that kept me in school was straight A's."

Kenshin found he was gritting his own teeth. He forced himself to relax and then said, as calmly as possible, "I wish I'd known."

Her e-mails to him had always been cheery -- full of discussion of her favorite movies and books, news about her family, the occasional tidbit about her friends. She'd never once mentioned problems at school, or complained about bullies.

"You'd have done precisely what, if you had?" Her words were bitter. "I can defend myself physically, Kenshin, if it comes down to it. It's the words that hurt more. And you can't stop the words. And anyway ... you were my sanctuary. You're the one person in my life who just wanted to talk about fun stuff. I ... value that, Kenshin. I really do. I just like _talking _to you."

He contemplated personally beating the shit out of every single one of the bullies that had made her so upset. But he knew she was right; that he couldn't protect her from hurtful words. He reached a hand out, impulsively, and rested it on her shoulder. "Carrie, I'm sorry. I know I can't protect you from everything, much as I'd like to. But if I'd known what was going on, at least I could have been there to _listen_."

"Oh," she said, in a very small voice, as if she'd never contemplated that sort of thing before.

"Carrie-dono, if you want to vent at me? I'll always listen. I promise. Sometimes it's best not to talk about horrible things ... but sometimes, it also helps to have somebody who will let you talk, even if you can't change them." He paused, then added, "I do like talking to you, too ... if you just want cheering up, I understand that need, too."

__

Because you always cheered me up, when you were Kaoru.

She gave him a shy smile, suddenly, and said, "Sometimes, it's hard to just make that first step -- to bring the problems up. Kenshin ... will you ask me, if you think I'm stewing on something? Ask me what's bothering me?"

He nodded gravely. "Your parents don't encourage you to talk about what bothers you, do they?"

She snorted. "You know what my dad's like. I'm not sure he can even _describe _what's eating him, if he's upset. He just gets really quiet and gets that stupid smile on his face. My mom ... gets angry. Sometimes, she gets drunk. And she smokes a lot, if she's mad. But neither of them want to _talk _about problems. And they don't want to hear mine, either. It's always 'Carrie don't whine' or 'Carrie, you brought it down on your own head' ... the first time I got arrested for hitting another kid, Dad grounded me for three months. He refused to even _listen _about why I broke the asshole's nose."

Kenshin sighed. "I can see why your father didn't want to hear it; there is no reason for striking another student that hard when you've been trained to defend yourself. However," he held a hand up to forestall her wounded protest, "I imagine you were rather sorely provoked."

"Yeah."

"Want to talk about it?"

She gave him a sideways look that may or may not have been grateful. But she explained, quietly, "They figured out that I got really, really upset if anyone ... harassed me ... right? I couldn't help it. I'd cry and scream and just lose it. Every time. Anyway, this guy -- his name was Logan -- he got me crying and then he was pretending he was sorry, and he apologized, and I bought it. And I accepted the apology. And then the next thing I knew, he'd grabbed me and had kissed me. Tongue and everything. My first fucking kiss and it was some god-damned bully."

She snorted, suddenly, and said, with some pride, "I kicked his _ass_."

"Okay," Kenshin said, "next time something like that happens, don't kick his ass. Call the cops. It's sexual assault and I'd rather see the bad guy arrested versus you, that I would ..."

She gave him a baleful look. "You think I don't _know _that? And I'd reported them to my teachers before. Nobody ever did anything. I'd had enough. Honestly, Kenshin, getting arrested was worth it, though I could have done without my parents telling me I was in the wrong. Because I don't think I was."

Kenshin blew out a short, sharp, breath. "No. You weren't in the wrong," _if I had been there, I'd have spanked that boy with the flat of my sword until he couldn't sit down, _"but sometimes, being in the right isn't enough. What's going to happen when you're an Immortal and you've got a sword on you and you punch somebody and get arrested? I can tell you from personal experience what happens. I'm _still _persona non grata in the entire country of France -- I got deported."

Carrie snorted a laugh. "Really?"

"Really. Same scenario, too. Some guy at a bar kissed me and I didn't like it. We were both pretty drunk, and I had Atsuko with me. And, you know, testosterone happens."

She giggled.

He grinned back at her -- though it hadn't been very funny at the time -- then sobered, "Carrie, I understand more than you think about unwanted advances. When I was little ..." he'd told her this story before, once, a long time ago, in another lifetime for her. "... suffice to say I wasn't always strong enough to turn them away."

She gave him a startled look. Her blue eyes were very wide. He hoped none of his suddenly acid thoughts, _What, you thought I was always an invulnerable hero? _showed on his face. "And that's one of those things I really prefer not to talk about." With candor, and a bit of self-deprecating humor, he added, "At least, not while I'm driving. If I get distracted and wreck and kill you, your father would have my head."

She didn't laugh now. Instead, she studied him with a narrow expression, as if trying to remember something.

He directed the subject of the conversation away from himself. He _would _tell her about his past, eventually -- all of it, not just the bits most of the family already knew. He already knew that she would be a dear friend. But this was not the right time. He wasn't joking about the driving bit; he had no desire to get in an accident, and it was that emotionally fraught of a subject that it was best avoided until he was at least not behind the wheel. He said, "Carrie -- something else I want you to understand, and what I want to make clear up front, is that I'm _not _trying to take the place of yourmom and dad. I'm here to keep your head attached to your shoulders, but I'm not going to tell you what to do or who to be friends with or how to behave. That's your choice. The only time I'm going to boss you around is if I think your safety's at stake."

She nodded. "You're my friend, not my parents. Got that."

"Seriously. I mean it, that I do. You're twenty -- you're more than old enough to make your own decisions." He hesitated, then added, "You're lucky, to live in this time. I'd like to see you really take advantage of all this world has to offer."

__

We were hungry, back then, Carrie, he thought, but didn't say, _forget a college education, and movies and books and DVDs -- forget dancing and fine dinners and sporting events. Forget television and music. Forget libraries. Forget malls. Forget methods of travel that cross halfway across the globe in the span of less than a day. Forget cars and computers. Forget the internet._

Most importantly, we were hungry_, Carrie-dono. The last time you lived, we were lucky to have enough protein to eat. You stood four foot ten inches tall as a young woman because you didn't have enough of the right food as a child to grow taller._

Unintentionally echoing his thoughts, she said, "What was it like, when you were my age?"

"Hungry," he said, simply, summarizing his thoughts. And, at twenty, he'd been living under bridges, he recalled. He added, "And lonely."

"Tell me about it?"

"I could tell you about some of the people I knew. If you wanted to hear."

"Saito?"

He snorted. He knew she'd studied enough Japanese history to know that Saito had been on the other side of the war, and, also, that their paths had crossed repeatedly. And Saito was a very well known historic figure. It was logical of her to ask about him. He teased, "History otaku."

"Guilty. But you did know him."

"Yes," Kenshin agreed. "Okay, I'll tell you about Saito ..."

---------------

An thirty minutes later he had told her the story of Saito and Sanosuke's first, rather disastrous, meeting -- and promised her the story of Shishio. She was suitably aghast, and intrigued, and _interested_. "You make it all come alive, Kenshin. It's like I was there."

He nearly bit his tongue when she said that. "Ah, hmm. I'll tell you more tonight. We're here."

The airport was typically busy, with business fliers and tourists both leaving town. He parked in the hourly parking, stuck the little ticket to his truck's visor, and led the way towards the terminal. Carrie asked, as they waited for the elevator, "When was the first time you flew?"

"In the 1920's." Kenshin grinned. "For fun. In a biplane." He scratched his nose. "I didn't want to go up, but Kaoru clucked like a chicken at me and I finally did. I _am _Immortal and concluded that the pain of crashing was going to be less than the pain of Kaoru teasing me about being chicken for weeks."

Carrie snickered. "I think I would have liked Kaoru."

Sometimes, the mental whiplash involved in speaking to Carrie threatened to put his brain into traction. "Et-to. Yes. Well. Anyway. The plane didn't crash. The first time I rode a passenger jet wasn't until the 1960's, when I took Atsuko to England to go to college."

"You went with her?"

"Aa. I had family there -- my children and grandchildren and I'd been away for a long time, that I had." Kenshin scratched his jaw. "And I've always liked England, at least, the countryside. It's very green and beautiful. Peaceful."

The elevator came and they stepped inside. The elevator took them down to the security area and Kenshin checked the display of flight times. Miracle of miracles, Morgan Trevor's airplane was on time. They had about ten minutes until it arrived.

"Want something to eat?" He indicated the snackbar. His stomach was growling; they had left before eating breakfast.

"Just a piece of fruit," Carrie said, after regarding a greasy, fatty, and high-calorie menu with a frown.

He got two bananas and two cups of coffee and they sat down to wait for Morgan.

"What does she look like?"

"George said she was blond," Kenshin said. "And that she'd be wearing a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it. She's got my photograph."

Carrie peeled her banana and took a bite out of it. "She's sixteen, you said?"

"Yeah."

"She'll be missing school, then."

"No," Kenshin said, shaking his head. That had been one of the things he'd hashed out with Mac and Richie last night. "She'll be attending a virtual high school -- I already asked her parents to enroll her in it. As far as the school will know, she won't even have left England."

"Oh." Carrie paused, then added, "I don't think I'd want to attend school on the internet. It'd be boring."

"Yes," Kenshin agreed. "She may need some company. I may be relying on you to be friendly with her. I trust you to have good judgment, that I do. I don't know Morgan at all."

"Thanks," Carrie said, flashing him a bright smile. "I'll babysit for you."

Kenshin snorted.

Fifteen minutes later, Morgan appeared -- Kenshin knew who she was as soon as she stepped past the security checkpoint and he got a good look at her. Generations later and she still bore a strong resemblance to Jessica Marshall -- tall, blond, similar facial features. By this point, he was practically expecting to find reincarnations of old friends and briefly, he considered the idea that she might _be _Jessica, reborn.

But she wasn't. She wasn't anyone he knew or had ever known.

"Morgan Trevor?" Kenshin said, approaching her.

She was as tall as Carrie, but not nearly as pretty, Kenshin noted academically. Carrie had a natural beauty that was enhanced by her athleticism and her _lack _of awareness of just how gorgeous she was. He glanced over at Carrie, who was wearing no makeup except for a bit of lip gloss, a somewhat scruffy t-shirt, and faded jeans, and an old scuffed pair of boots -- knee length leather boots being last year's fashion statement. She had her hair yanked back into a somewhat messy ponytail with bangs that needed trimming. Despite all that, Carrie still managed to look like a model that was slumming it, and, in Kenshin's admittedly partial opinion, she was light years more beautiful than Morgan could ever be.

Morgan was _trying _too hard. She had on way too much makeup, her shirt was too tight, her jeans cut too low, her hair too styled. She could have easily passed for older than Carrie, but it was a false beauty. Kenshin, father of daughters in the past, grandfather to this girl's ancestors, had a strong desire to march her to the bathroom and scrub the makeup off her face first thing. And then, possibly, take her jogging with him for the next few months so that she worked off some of the extra weight on her frame. She could stand to lose, he thought, thirty or forty pounds.

Given the fact that all of her clothing was too tight, the extra weight wasn't complimentary. She wasn't fat, exactly, just buxom -- but she was wearing an outfit better suited for someone who was a size zero.

__

Not good, Kenshin thought, sizing her up. The clothes implied, to him, a girl of dubious morality. And the sense he got from her was a roiling mass of confusion, anger, and sexuality.

"Kenny Myojin?" She said, uncertainly, frowning at him. "_You're _Mr. Myojin?"

"Aa." He held a hand out for her to shake. Warily, she accepted it. Her nails were painted with brilliant red and she was wearing cheap perfume. She was still regarding him with a doubtful expression.

"I thought you'd be older."

Carrie coughed and took a sip of her coffee to hide what Kenshin suspected was a smirk. Then Carrie said, "I'm Carrie Seta, Kenny's friend. Trust me, he's older than he looks."

Morgan blinked. Kenshin cleared his throat, and said, "How was your flight?"

"Long," Morgan glanced from Kenny to Carrie and back. "Uncle George said you were going to put me up?"

"Actually," Kenshin said, as he led the way to the baggage claim area one floor down, "I ..."

At that moment, he glanced out the window and saw a plane at a jetway. Memory struck, unbidden, and random: _The last time I saw Atsuko alive was at this airport, seven years ago. Our plane was parked right there. We left from this terminal. She was laughing, and excited about Hawai'i ..._

"Kenshin?" Carrie said, in Japanese, "Are you okay?"

He blinked, realized his expression must have betrayed his thoughts, and said, very low, in the same language, "I apologize, Carrie. Just an attack of memories. Live as long as I do, and you'll have your share of history that sneaks up and ambushes you when least expected ..."

"Atsuko," she guessed, and rested a hand on his shoulder. He was oddly comforted by the touch, when normally, he would have quietly stepped away from any contact from another person. "I didn't think ... it was at this airport, wasn't it?"

"I'll be fine," he said back, low. Then, to Morgan, who was looking perturbed -- perhaps because she was being excluded rather rudely from the conversation -- he said, in as bright a tone as he could muster, "You'll be staying with Richie Ryan. He's a friend of mine, and he has a spare bedroom."

"A guy?" She said, in a curious tone. "Is he single?"

"Don't worry. He'll behave." Kenshin smiled reassuringly at her. "Richie's a good guy. He's all sorts of protective -- it'll be like living with a big brother."

"Oh." She fell silent, and trailed after them to the baggage carousel.

--------------

Richie's eyebrows rose when he saw Morgan. Kenshin returned his look with a shrug, behind Morgan's back. Kenshin, father to teens, thought, but didn't say, _I didn't dress her. You're welcome to try to get her to wear something more appropriate to her age, Richie-kun, but I can guarantee it'll be a fight that you'll never forget and probably one not worth the effort._

Richie held a hand out to Morgan. "Hi. I'm Richie."

Morgan's look was frankly appraising. "Hi. I'm Morgan. Call me Merry. 'Cause I am. All the boys say so."

Carrie said, in Japanese, to Kenshin, "Any more blatant and she'd be kissing him."

Richie's brows drew together, and he shot Kenshin an alarmed look now. Kenshin lifted an eyebrow back.

"Mmm," Richie said, leading the way into his condo. It was an attractive, modern loft; Kenshin was struck by how educated and cultured Richie had become over the last twenty years. In 1994, when they had first met, Richie had been a teenage street kid.

And this was purely Richie's touch -- MacLeod liked antiques, that the condo had a very modern feel, with photographs on the wall and vaguely futuristic furniture.

"Let me show you your bedroom. I just put a lock on the door for you ..." Richie headed for hall that led off the living area.

"He'd best put a lock on his own door," Carrie snickered, suddenly, behind Kenshin.

"Hush. You're being rude," Kenshin chastised her.

Morgan's room was small, but efficiently laid out, with a desk, bed, dresser, and empty bookshelves. There was also a computer already on the desk. Richie gestured at it. "The computer's about two years old, but it works fine. I just got a new one. That one's got a bunch of video games on it."

Morgan, without a word, dropped her suitcases on the floor. She walked to the window and stared out it.

"Oookay," Richie said, "You're welcome. I'll let you unpack."

Outside, back in the living room, Kenshin said quietly, "Don't be too hard on her, Richie. It's gotta be hard on her ..."

Richie ran a hand over his short red curls. "Ah, don't worry about it, Ken. I think I lived with thirty different families by the time I was seventeen ... Mac was the first person in my life who _stayed_. I know she's feeling pretty bad right now and I'm trying not to take that 'tude personally. Just ... eesh, I think I'll be keeping a close eye on her, if you know what I mean."

__

Richie, if only I had known about you, you'd have had a home with me ... Kenshin thought. "I appreciate it. Carrie and I can help, for what it's worth. We'll all work together."

"She's going to _love _that," Richie said, "speaking from the viewpoint of being a teenager once myself."

Kenshin suspected Richie had an unusually good perspective on rebellious teens, having both been one and known many others in the system. Mac's suggestion to have Richie put Morgan up was making more and more sense to Kenshin.

"Speaking from the viewpoint of having raised teenagers," Kenshin said, "I suspect _love _is not going to be one of her reactions to being closely supervised, but I think it is necessary until we know her better."

"Mm. Well, Mac did say she could stay at the dojo during the day, when I'm at work. He'll give her the option of working on her homework, hanging out in his loft, or doing some odd jobs for him, I expect. Cleaning, paperwork, that sort of thing. He'll pay her, certainly."

Kenshin nodded. "Won't hurt her to do some chores for you, too. Dishes and vacuuming, I'd think, like we discussed last night."

"Yeah," Richie agreed. "And I'll expect her to keep her room clean and her grades up. I get to play the grownup ... joy of all joys."

Carrie snickered. "I'm sure you can put on a good act, Richie."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He said, sounding annoyed.

Carrie pointed, singling out a stack of comics on his coffee table. Richie folded his arms and glared, "I'll have you know that those are _graphic novels_ and there are lots of adults who like them."

"Carrie likes Fruits Basket," Kenshin said, in a completely innocent tone of voice.

"Kenshin!" she squealed, and slapped him. "Jerk."

Kenshin flopped onto the couch, pretending to be significantly more injured than he was. Richie snickered and said, "I think he liked that, Carrie."

At that moment, Morgan opened her door and stepped out. "I'm unpacked. Is there something to eat?"

"That was quick."

"Didn't bring much. My mom was so scared she didn't even really let me pack. We spent the last couple of nights in a hotel." Morgan's words were casual, but Kenshin thought she was a lot more frightened than she was letting on.

"You're safe now, that you are," Kenshin said, soothingly. "None of us will let anything happen to you."

Her look was purely disbelieving. Kenshin wanted to sigh, but restrained himself. On the surface, he supposed they weren't a very intimidating group -- none of them looked older than twenty, Carrie was a girl, he was under five feet tall, and Richie was currently flipping through one of the graphic novels that Carrie had singled out. The reality was very different, but she had no way of knowing that. And he quite honestly hoped she never found out.

It was, Kenshin decided, going to be a very long few months until they could send Morgan home.

------------------


	5. Chapter 5

Mac closed the dojo at seven to his members, locked the front door, and pulled the shades on the windows.

Kenshin, seated crosslegged on a weight bench, watched the assembled Immortals with interest. Apparently, his reputation proceeded him and word had gotten out that he was going to practice with MacLeod. The result was the largest concentrations of Immortals in one place that he had witnessed in several years, plus friends.

What had to be half of Seacouver's Immortal population had shown up -- Adam, Amanda, Richie, Chiyoko, plus Mac. In addition, Joe Dawson was seated in a comfortable chair by Mac's office door, wheelchair discreetly out of sight. His granddaughter -- twenty-something, dark haired, pretty -- sat crosslegged on the ground at his feet, a shinai in her lap.

Kenshin had been dismayed to see how old Joe was getting. Time had not been kind to him. He was old, frail, palsied, and had given up his artificial legs in lieu of a wheelchair. His eyes were still sharp, however, and he bantered cheerfully with the others.

And Tammy was here, as well, having arrived with Adam. Kenshin glanced over at her -- she appeared to be friends with both Miya Dawson and Daniel Rodriguez. She looked good, fit and happy.

Danny was all grown up. He was propping up the wall not far from Tammy, arms folded, eyes occasionally wandering in Kenshin's direction and narrowing. He had gained a few tattoos, several inches in height, and quite a bit of wiry muscle. The tough kid had become an even tougher looking man. He looked like a young thug; Kenshin suspected even in a suit and tie and with the tats covered, he'd look rough.

Morgan, seated against the opposite wall, kept giving Danny interested looks. Kenshin's father-instincts were on high alert based on where her eyes kept falling. She'd picked out the one obvious bad boy in the room and had him in her sights. Danny, for his part, was at least oblivious to her interest -- for the moment.

__

You're jail bait, kiddo, Kenshin thought, with black amusement. _And I'm betting he's smart enough to realize it._

Kenshin wondered how much of Danny's appearance and attitude was an act and how much was real. MacLeod and Richie had both said complimentary things about the man, which led Kenshin to believe he had integrity and honor -- something the general sense of him that Kenshin was detecting bore out. He had a clarity of purpose to his soul that Kenshin liked, and which reminded him a great deal of Yahiko.

"Ken!" Mac called, and tossed him an shinai. They had agreed to spar using bamboo swords to avoid any serious accidents in front of Morgan. While both of them would heal rapidly from any accidental -- or deliberate -- cuts, Morgan didn't know that.

Kenshin tested the balance of the bamboo blade. He was generally scornful of shinai, preferring the admittedly masochistic danger of live steel in a practice bout. It was easy to get lazy when the worst injury you could suffer was a bad bruise or a minor cut. He wondered idly if he could get Mac into a proper match later, without mortal eyes on them, and using their own swords.

Then he focused on the match at hand. He was at a disadvantage in that the ceiling in the dojo was only about eight feet high and limited some of his more acrobatic moves. And he, obviously, couldn't use battoujitsu with a shinai. He was still faster than MacLeod, but Mac was smart, and fought dirty. And MacLeod had sparred with him before, and appeared to be pretty decent at reading ki. This would be a closer fight than he was normally used to.

They circled each other. Kenshin's bare feet found firm purchase on the padded practice matt. This was safe, and tame, he thought. He remembered learning to fight on rocks overlooking a waterfall. Hiko had thrown him into the water more times than he could count. He'd knocked himself out, multiple times, in vicious falls. His knees and elbows had constantly been scraped and bruised; those aches added to the muscle pain and frequent cuts and black and blue marks caused by the katanas they had trained with.

__

These days, Hiko would be arrested for child abuse. But he knew what I was -- somehow, I never knew how -- and what he taught me kept me alive.

MacLeod moved first. Kenshin blocked his blow, forced back a step by the power behind Mac's strike. The bamboo blades cracked explosively together again and again. The Highlander weighed twice what he did, which was definitely in Mac's favor.

Mac lashed out with his foot, intending to trip Kenshin ... Kenshin twisted out of the way, dropped to the ground, swept his own legs under MacLeod's kick and knocked him off his feet. Before MacLeod could recover Kenshin was back on his feet and had the shinai pressed against MacLeod's throat.

Richie chuckled. "I am _so _glad to see this. It's been awhile since anyone took Mac down!"

Laugher, all around the room, from everyone who knew Mac, made the larger man grit his teeth in annoyance. MacLeod, with an irritated growl, scrambled back to his feet. Kenshin shrugged. "You were the one who suggested this."

Half an hour later, Kenshin had won best of seven rounds -- he was _not _happy that Mac had managed a "killing" blow three out of seven times. MacLeod was good, he tried to console himself, but his pride felt injured. Both of them had several bruises, and Kenshin figured he would have lost his arm if they'd been playing with real steel. One of the _advantages _to shinai was that you didn't need to pull your blows quite as much.

He sat down next to Carrie, who leaned over and murmured, "Good thing you two are friends."

Kenshin snorted. "You're up next, Carrie."

Mac wiped sweat from his face with a towel. "I'd like to see her spar with Amanda -- if you're up for it, Amanda."

Amanda grinned, and accepted the shinai from MacLeod.

Kenshin sat up straighter, very interested. He'd never seen Carrie in action before, though he had an idea she would be good. Carrie hopped up, claimed Kenshin's bamboo sword from him, then stripped off her faded, baggy t-shirt, revealing a sports bra -- and quite a bit of wiry muscle. She also had a few scars on her back; Kenshin suspected that Soujiro wasn't always kind in the ways he trained his daughter. _If it keeps her alive some day, I'd make her bleed occasionally too, _Kenshin thought, somewhat grimly.

The two women circled each other. Amanda was short, slim, and moved with a certain predatory, feline grace. Carrie, by contrast, was tall, athletic, wiry.

Kenshin winced a bit at the amount of skin she was revealing -- the bra was designed as outerwear, but still ... _well, Kaoru was never shy about what she wore, either._

It also became obvious very quickly that this was an even match. Kenshin was more than pleased because Amanda was good -- Amanda had fifteen hundred years of experience. Carrie was very young, but technically brilliant. She made very few mistakes, and she was both precise and blindingly fast.

Kenshin watched her appraisingly. She used her greater weight to her advantage, putting some real power behind the blows. Twice, she landed stinging blows to Amanda's arms -- had she been armed with a real sword, the second blow would have broken Amanda's wrist, at a minimum.

The two women circled each other, looking for an opening. Amanda feinted at Carrie's knee and Carrie smashed the bamboo sword aside with a formidable blow. Amanda's shinai broke, and the end ricocheted off the ground and slammed into Carrie's ribs as Carrie carried through a "killing" blow to Amanda's throat, stopping a fraction of an inch from the skin. With a grin, Carrie said, "Gotcha."

"My shinai broke," Amanda protested, shaking her hand. Apparently, the force of the blow had been transmitted to her fingers. "That wasn't a fair match."

"Carrie _broke _your shinai," MacLeod said, smirking. He obviously was highly amused by Amanda losing to the kid. Richie was hiding a grin behind a can of soda that he was pretending to sip, and Adam was snickering more openly.

"She's bleeding," Amanda pointed out.

Carrie glanced down at her ribs. Blood trickled freely down from an inch-long gash. The sharp end of the shinai had left a deep cut. "Damn. Anyone have a bandaid?"

"There's a first aid kit in my office," Mac said. "I'll get it."

"Ewww!" Morgan had her eyes covered.

Kenshin ignored that. He and Richie, and Adam, and Amanda, all clustered around Carrie, peering with interest at the bloody cut. "That's a freak bit of bad luck," Adam said.

"Gotta hurt," Richie agreed.

Kenshin bent over and squinted at it. "I do not believe it will need stitches, Carrie-dono, but we should wash it out. Bamboo splinters can cause nasty infections. "

MacLeod returned with the first aid kit. Kenshin held his hand out for the white metal box, and then said, "If you don't mind, I'll help her get this patched up."

"I'm fine ..." Carrie started to protest.

"Humor me, please, Carrie-dono," Kenshin said. He was genuinely concerned -- it was a nasty cut. Until she lost her life that first time she was as vulnerable as any mortal to infections and injuries. Kenshin put a hand on her back and steered her towards the lady's restroom -- since they were the only people in the dojo he assumed it would be safe for him to enter.

"Sit," he patted the counter next to the sinks.

Uncertainly, she hitched herself up. He opened the first aid kit and was unsurprised to find that it was well stocked with plenty of gauze and even a small bottle of betadine soap. Given the fact that MacLeod gave lessons in various forms of self defense he figured minor injuries were reasonably common. "Does it hurt badly?"

"Not really," she held her arm up while he washed away the blood.

"This might sting a bit, that it will." His fingers found a splinter, as he'd feared -- he pulled it out with a pair of forceps, then scrubbed the cut. She was silent, lower lip caught in her teeth, as he worked. He then stuck the edges of the cut together with three butterfly bandages. The bleeding was nearly stopped -- he taped a couple of layers of gauze over it and said, "Keep it dry for several days."

"I know, I know," she rolled her eyes. "I've been cut before."

"So have I," he said, with a grin. "I suppose you know that it'll hurt a lot worse tomorrow."

Unexpectedly, her fingers traced one of the scars on his arms. "How did you get this one, Kenshin?"

He glanced at it. It was one of several that marked his forearm, but this scar appeared to have burn marks on either side of it. "Shishio, I think."

"You think?"

He explained, "It was a long time ago, I had multiple fights over the course of a few days, and I was very sick for a month afterwards. I'm not entirely sure how I got every scar -- just the significant ones."

"Like this one?" she reached a hand out, and touched one of the two matching scars over his jugular veins. "That could have killed you for real."

"Likely not. Aoshi was trying to slit my throat, not take my head off." He brushed the matching mark on the other side of his neck with the ball of his thumb. "A hair's breadth deeper, however, and I would have bled out. I confess to a bit of curiosity about Aoshi's reaction if I had woken, later. I almost wish he had killed me, simply to see the look on his face."

__

That might have had as much of an impact on him as anything else I could have done.

"Wasn't Aoshi one of your friends?" She said, eyes wide.

"Yes. He was, later." Kenshin realized he should have been bothered by her light touches, but he simply wasn't. It didn't feel like an invasion of his space. He trusted her implicitly.

"How did you get the scars on your face? My mom said she didn't know," she asked, then realized, apparently, that she was being a bit forward. "Sorry, Kenshin. I shouldn't be so nosy."

"It's okay. I'll tell you later -- it's just too long of a story to tell now." He closed the first aid box back up and made an 'after you' gesture at the door.

-------------------

Carrie was grinning when Kenshin held the door open for her, late that evening, when they returned to the dorm. "I had a ton of fun, Kenshin," she said, voice low for the benefit of people sleeping.

"Aa. So did I." He glanced up at her. _Beautiful_, he thought, then mentally smacked himself. _Not interested in me that way._

The lobby was empty except for a housekeeper who was sweeping the floor. Kenshin nodded politely to her and then led the way up the stairs to the second floor. To his dismay, Brandon was seated on the floor outside his room, face upturned, tears tracking down his cheek.

"Brandon?" Carrie said, alarmed. "What happened?"

"The usual," Brandon looked away from her.

He started to lever himself upright, but wince, and Kenshin put a staying hand on his shoulder. "Where are you hurt?"

With teeth gritted, Brandon slumped back down. After a moment, he said, "It's just my back. I've been cleaning all night -- it hurts so bad, sometimes."

"What happened?" Kenshin crouched next to him.

"They shaving creamed my room," Brandon ran a hand over his face, then gestured loosely at the bucket of soapy water and a rag next to him. "It's in _everything_."

"That's ... tacky." Carrie frowned at him.

"Tacky? They ruined my computer. And my DVD player. And my clothes. It's all over my clothes." He pressed at his eyes with the heels of both hands. "I'm sorry to cry, but I'm just so _tired _of this. They wrote 'fag' in shaving cream on my door. It's what I was washing off ..." he gestured at the bucket.

Kenshin said, "You're not the only gay student here, Brandon. I don't understand why they singled you out."

Brandon gestured at his legs, impatiently. "If you're gay people have a stereotype that you're young and beautiful and athletic. If _you _were gay you'd be popular with everyone. You're adorable."

Kenshin snorted.

"I'm not any of that. I think I threaten people more because of that." He rolled over, pushed himself up onto his toes, then used the wall to lever himself upright. Kenshin handed him his crutch -- he only had one with him, likely so he could carry the bucket of water. "I need to dump that ... " he gestured helplessly at the water.

"Here, I'll get it for you." Kenshin picked it up.

"Thanks," Brandon mumbled. He reached into his pocket and swiped his passkey against the reader. The lock on his door buzzed open and Kenshin held the door open so Brandon could pass through.

Inside, the room _reeked _of shaving cream -- the stink in the air was enough to make Kenshin's eyes start watering. Carrie, following them in behind, started coughing. And Brandon was right -- there was shaving cream absolutely every where, in addition to a couple dozen empty bottles of it thrown on the floor. His bed was covered and the walls were decorated in rude symbols including a swastika and crude representations of male genitalia. His pillows were soaked and laying on the floor -- Kenshin put one back on the bed to get it out of the way and shaving cream oozed out from the pillow case.

The light over Brandon's bed shone dimly; they'd squirted it under the glass globe. As he'd said, his computer -- a laptop -- was soaked, they'd filled the keyboard up and Kenshin was willing to bet it wasn't going to boot ever again. They'd squirted shaving cream into his DVD player's slot.

The room was divided in half by a line of masking tape. There wasn't a bit of mess on the roommate's side of the room. The roommate himself was sitting on his bed, headphones on, reading. He didn't look up.

Carrie reached down, and picked up one of Brandon's shoes. The sneaker was filled to overflowing with white menthol-scented foam.

She eyed the roommate, who was obviously ignoring them -- he'd raised the book up so he couldn't even see the three of them. Kenshin's only warning of what she had in mind was a flash of clear, focused aggression from her. With perfect aim she threw the shoe and hit the roommate's book hard enough that it smacked him in the face. Foam splattered on him, on the book, and on his bed.

"What the fuck was that for!" The roommate lunged to his feet, fury on his face. He was, Kenshin realized, not a particularly large boy -- which meant he was a head taller than Kenshin, half a head shorter than Brandon, and on eye level with Carrie.

"For being an asswipe," Carrie informed him. "You're sitting on your butt reading," she glanced at the book, "bad pulp horror while Brandon's got this whole mess to clean up."

"So? The fuck that's my problem!"

Kenshin suspected the boy might have been slightly less confrontational if Carrie hadn't just gotten goop all over his _bad pulp horror _novel. However, Kenshin wasn't particularly sympathetic. He agreed with Carrie, "Brandon needs a hand, that he does. It would be polite of you to help."

"Not my problem!"

"Guys," Brandon said, sounding exhausted. "It's not worth it."

"He brought it down on himself," the roommate snarled. "I'm out of here. It stinks in here."

Kenshin put a hand out, stopping the roommate from leaving with a palm to his chest. "Please wait a minute, Michael. I am very curious; did you see or hear anything in regards to what happened here?"

"Fuck no." Michael tried to shove past Kenshin's restraining arm; Kenshin didn't move, though the muscles in his shoulder bunched.

"Guys ..." Brandon waved his free hand in the air helplessly.

Kenshin released Michael, though he stood between him and the exit. "What is your alibi?"

Brandon interrupted, before Michael could answer, "He was in the cafeteria, Kenny. We both were. He didn't do it." Brandon paused, took a deep breath, and glared. "I _know _he was there because he was talking about me to his friends. Just because I'm a cripple doesn't mean I can't read lips."

Michael went a degree or two paler.

Kenshin frowned. Something didn't feel right here. The roommate was overtly hostile to Brandon ... flagrantly so. And yet, Kenshin didn't think the boy was stupid. He was too obviously the culprit; why would anyone set themselves up so blatantly? Kenshin shook his head, finally, "C'mon, Brandon. We can clean this up in the morning. It's late."

"You're not going to clean it up now?" Michael said, in dismay.

Kenshin said, "As you don't wish to help and as Carrie and I have had a long day and are exhausted, I suggest we wait until tomorrow, when all of us have had some sleep."

"But it stinks in here!" Michael protested.

"Aa. That it does." Kenshin rested a hand on Brandon's arm. "You can have my bed tonight; it is not the first nor the last time I'll sleep on the floor."

"I couldn't do that ..." Brandon protested.

"Aa, you can. I'm in much better shape than you are, and it's no trouble at all. In fact, all I have in my home in Tokyo is a futon to sleep on." Kenshin smiled cheerfully and firmly told himself that even if he was stiff in the morning, Brandon had far worse pain to deal with.

"Okay ..." Brandon said, uncertainly.

"But ..." the roommate protested, as they exited the room. "But ..."

Out of earshot of the boy, once the door was closed, Brandon said to Carrie, "You shouldn't have done that with the shoe. He'll report you, I can guarantee it. I think he's a bit of a tattletale."

"So?" Carrie said, with an insouciant shrug. "I'd do it again. He was being an ass."

Brandon smiled, faintly. "Are you always this way?"

"What way?" Carrie said, in confusion. When Brandon shrugged and wouldn't elaborate, she glared, and folded her arms.

__

Oh, yes, Kenshin thought, glancing over at Carrie. He was proud of her -- oh, not for the shoe-throwing bit; he needed to have a long discussion with her about the proper, appropriate, and timely use of violence in the modern era. He was proud of her for the way she had stood up for a friend. _Oh, yes, _he smiled a very private smile, _she's always been that way._


	6. Chapter 6

__

Kenshin's hair tumbled in a red, tangled mass across the pillow, highlights golden in the light of candles on her dresser. He gazed up at her, mouth parted, amethyst eyes half closed, chin tilted up so that his long neck was exposed.

She had her hands on his shoulders, pinning him down. He was breathing rapidly, staring up at her, but she didn't think he was exactly upset, oh no. Her knees were on either side of his narrow waist and she sat on his thighs. Something hard, hot, velvety rested against the inside of one of her legs, very close to her core ... She leaned forward to kiss him ...

... and the alarm went off on the dresser.

Carrie blinked, opened her eyes, and realized that she wasn't in her bedroom at all, she was in her dorm room, and the alarm was the microwave oven beeping to announce it had finished nuking something. Blushing ferociously, she sat up and regarded Meg with some dismay. She had rather been enjoying the dream and wished she could burrow under the covers and return to it but Meg had woken her.

__

Gods. Kenshin.

The dream was embarrassing, and yet ... she wondered what it would be like to really kiss him.

However, she was reasonably sure his reaction, if she tried to simply kiss him, would be a very polite but firm rejection of any overture she might make. While Kenshin had been nothing but impeccably polite to her he had never given even one sign that he might be romantically interested. If she tried to pin him down as she had in the dream she suspected his reaction might be distinctly hostile.

__

But it felt so real. So possible.

Really -- she was a twenty year old college kid. What interest, she wondered, could Kenshin possibly have in her? She was certain that his friendship with her was equal parts friendly, paternal interest and obligation. He was oathsworn to defend her.

__

Is it even right to think about him that way? Carrie wondered, watching somewhat fuzzily as Meg heated up a cup of hot water in the microwave. _He's a hundred and sixty years old and he was married to my aunt._ Without turning around, Meg asked, "So, did you and Kenny have a good time last night?"

"Yeah. We were out late with friends of his. But somebody trashed Brandon's dorm." Carrie was surprised at how normal and casual she sounded after that dream. It was best, she decided, to not even imply anything about her attraction to Kenshin -- not with Meg, and especially not with Kenshin himself. She didn't think she could deal with either Meg's encouragement or the inevitable disappointment when Kenshin turned her down. "We promised we'd help clean up."

"Because of who he is?" Meg asked.

"Apparently."

"I'll help," Meg said, instantly.

Carrie had been expecting that, and grinned. "Thanks."

"So, you and Kenny ..."

"There is _nothing _going on between me and Kenny," Carrie threw her hands up. "He's just a friend. Please, Margaret, don't start. It makes me uncomfortable."

Meg sighed. Carrie thought it was a long-suffering type of sigh and it made her want to smack her friend up side the head with a bokken. Meg said, "You're too up tight, Carrie. -- Want some oatmeal?" she held up a box of flavored oatmeal packets. "It's good for you."

"Meh. Beats the cafeteria menu. Or McDonalds."

Meg put another mug of water in to nuke. "So, does Kenshin have any cute, available friends?"

Carrie tilted her head sideways, considering the question seriously. MacLeod _looked _too old, regardless of his actual age. He appeared to be mid to late thirties. However, Richie had a sort of ageless-young quality and she knew he was single because she'd overheard Morgan asking. Also, Richie was in his late 30's ... old, but not ancient, certainly not by Immortal standards. "Richie Ryan. He's adorable, you'd like him."

"Yeah? How old?"

Carrie shrugged. "Dunno. He'd looks early twenties. He's a mechanic, and a martial artist. Does personal training on the side, I believe. Makes a pretty good living. _And _he's cute, I tell you. He's got short red hair that sticks up and a great sense of humor."

"Funny how you can tell me all about a cute guy if you're not actually interested in him," Meg teased.

Carrie made a very unladylike and annoyed snort. "Drop it, Meg. And no, I'm not interested in Richie. But I'll be happy to introduce you if you want. He's a good guy, he's just not my type."

"And what _is _your type?"

Carrie shrugged.

"Cute little guy with red hair ..."

Carrie reached over, snagged her pillow off her bed, and threw it at Meg. Meg threw it back. The pillow fight that resulted was still raging several minutes later when someone knocked on the door.

"Kenny?" Meg guessed.

Carrie shook her head. She didn't have the ability to sense Immortals like Kenshin did, but she was getting pretty good at feeling his ki -- when he wasn't masking it. She wasn't sure if he did it deliberately or not, but sometimes, he was so quiet and still that she could stand right next to him and not know he was there.

Meg opened the door. Shannon stood there, arms folded, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Carrie? I need to talk to you."

"Okay." She waved a hand at her pajamas. "Let me get dressed."

He was still waiting outside when she stepped out a minute later. She yawned, and he said, with a smirk, "Out partying late last night?"

"Out with friends," she said. "Not a drunken party, if that's what you mean."

"Oh." Shannon shifted his weight from foot to foot for a moment, then said, "Michael was at my door at dawn this morning, complaining about you."

"Well, I'm not sorry." Carrie snorted. "He's a fucking little jerk. Brandon was trying to clean his room up and he was just sitting there all smug. He was behind the mess, I know it."

"He claimed you assaulted him."

"I threw a _shoe _at him. I think he'll survive. And I'm not sorry about it." She met Shannon's eyes with a level gaze.

He snorted a laugh, suddenly. "You're right -- he probably is behind the mess."

"Am I in trouble?" Carrie asked, bluntly. "I'll take whatever punishment you want to lay out."

Shannon snorted. "You know, technically, if I wanted to be mean, I could call the cops and have you arrested for assault. Michael still could, but I doubt he will -- I made it pretty clear to him that he doesn't want to piss me off."

"So -- you're not going to call the cops." Carrie's voice was perfectly calm. That surprised her; she certainly didn't feel calm. She knew he could get her kicked out for assaulting another student.

"Nah. That sort of charge could lead to your expulsion. And you're right, it's just a shoe, and Michael's an ass." Shannon leaned against the wall, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other.

"You're not just doing this because you want a date with me." Carrie demanded, without thinking her words through. _Gah. He's being nice. He could change his mind!_

"Grateful, aren't you? -- But no, I'm not. I wouldn't say no to a date, woman, but as I said, Michael's an idiot with a nasty mean streak." Shannon ran a hand over his face, then blew out an explosive sigh. "Look, I think Brandon's an idiot for being out in the open like he is, and so confrontational, particularly since he can't defend himself if anyone attacks him. He's an easy target, and I think he should be more careful. And he just annoys me -- we've never seen eye to eye. But what they did to his room was wrong, and it pisses me off in all sorts of ways."

Shannon was silent for a moment, arms folded. Just as Carrie was thinking, _Ah, he's not such a bad guy, I guess_, with a snort, he said, "If he wasn't such a _fag _this might not have happened to him."

"Hey! That's like blaming the victim! Are you saying he was asking for it?" Meg snapped behind Carrie.

Carrie's eyes narrowed. "Even as little as I've known Brandon I could tell you that he can't hide it."

"Sure he could, if he wanted to, and it would make his life a lot easier," Shannon straightened up. "Date a few women, fart and belch, drink beer, watch macho sports, and make appropriately rude comments about women and his own kind at the right times, and nobody would ever suspect a thing. He's made a _choice _to be out in the open, and then expects the rest of us to cover his butt and defend him from mean people. Pisses me off. Why should it be my responsibility to protect some idiot who's setting himself up for the abuse?"

"He's being true to who he is. I respect his courage." That was Meg, who looked Shannon up and down. Her eyes narrowed. "I see why Brandon doesn't like you."

Shannon was silent for a moment, then he sighed again, softer this time. "I'm not his enemy. I just find him infuriating."

"Then help us clean his room up. Prove it." Carrie frowned at him.

Shannon flipped a hand in the air. "I have a meeting to go to this morning. Sorry."

"Uh-huh." Carrie rolled her eyes, as he walked away.

Meg growled, "He protests too much, I think. I think he's got all sorts of problems about gays."

"Probably," Carrie concurred.

"You want your oatmeal?"

"Oh. Yeah." Carrie accepted the mug of peaches and cream flavored oats from Meg. She stared after Shannon for a couple of minutes, though, before returning back inside the dorm. She couldn't quite figure him out, but something important was nagging at the back of her brain.

-------------------

Richie Ryan sipped his coffee and listened to the light footsteps as Morgan snuck towards the door. He was seated just outside the door, on his condo's front steps, legs stretched out before him. As the door opened behind him he said, "Good morning."

Morgan was dead silent. "I was, uh ..."

"Running away. Smart, that, given that Ken seems to think bad guys are after you and you're running away from people who can actually keep you safe." Richie let sarcasm ooze into his words, and he spoke without turning around. "Granted, Morgan, I get the whole not trusting anyone bit, 'cause I've been there. But at least assume we're the lesser of two evils until proven otherwise."

Silence.

"You ever live on the streets?" Richie flung his coffee into the bushes beside the steps.

"... I can take care of myself."

"Uh-huh. I've _lived _on the streets. I've been homeless, and I've been hungry, and I've been a kid in the system. Wasn't until Mac found me that I realized there was any other way to live." He gestured over the shoulder at his condo. "Or that it could be _me _owning my own home and holding down real jobs and being a respectable member of society. So to speak."

He added, before she could say anything, "The bad guys after you? Are _no worse _than what waits for you out on the street if you run away from here."

"I've got some money ..."

"Yeah. Three hundred. Ken said he gave you some money for clothes and supplies and stuff. That'll get you about three weeks in a flop house, if you don't plan to eat. Two, if you do and you like ramen enough to live on it. Are you planning to turn tricks, deal drugs, or get a job at McDonalds to pay for the shitty hotel room and your groceries once you're broke? You might have problems with McDonalds, given you don't have a work visa." Richie paused, then added, "There's also stealing and selling stuff. Been there, done that. Which reminds me -- if you're going to leave, you're doing it without my wallet."

He turned around and held a hand out to her. That wasn't entirely a lucky guess; he'd heard his bedroom door squeak open minutes before.

"I didn't steal your wallet." She took a step back.

"Okay." She was lying, he could see it in her eyes. She also looked a whole hell of a lot more scared than she had a minute before. Richie had her pegged as a middle class twit who only _thought _she was tough. He put his hand back in his pocket. "Why don't you go back inside and I'll cook breakfast. After that, I'm helping a friend move into his dorm -- you met Danny yesterday. You can either help us move or hang out with Mac for the day."

"How come you get to boss me around? You're not much older than I am." This was said with a sullen glare.

"I'm thirty eight," Richie said -- his real age, and what was still on his driver's license. He could marginally pass for the age; he'd looked far older than his years when he had been a teenager. Though, he thought, and Mac concurred, that it wasn't going to work much longer. Soon enough he'd have to change his identity and start his life over. Most Immortals did that every few decades.

__

And then there's Kenshin. Who has been openly Immortal to many members of his very extended family for over a century even if he changes his legal ID about every seven or eight years. I still don't know how he handles the family stuff. Pure charm and force of personality, maybe.

Though Richie got the feeling that Ken didn't actually tell them the details unless they had reason to know.

She blinked. Glowered. Turned around and went inside.

"Oye," Richie said, very low. "I was never that angsty, even as a teenager."

---------------------

Kenshin ran easily, sneakers beating an easy rhythm on the pavement as he jogged past the campus library. It was a cool, humid morning -- he figured it would rain hard later, but the air was comfortable for a long jog now.

__

And boy do I need the run. And then a cold shower after.

His face flushed with the memory of the dream that had woken him.

__

She's not Kaoru. She's not interested in me. Even if she was, I'm not sure I'd take her up on it. I'm not sure I can separate Carrie from Kaoru and that's not fair to Carrie. She deserves someone who can see her as her_, untainted by past history._

When he and Kaoru had married, had a grand total of one night's experience more than her complete virginity. Even so, he had expected to be the aggressor -- he had _wanted _to be 'in charge.' He was the man, he was supposed to be confident and masculine and macho. He had gone to their wedding night expecting Kaoru to be a bit intimidated, even scared, by her first time. He had planned to seduce her, coax her along, and ease the fears he assumed she had.

Somehow, within five minutes of their first wedding-night kiss, she'd ended up on top, straddling his thighs, naked, giggling with amusement because she'd just discovered, in attempting to help him undress, that he was ticklish. Grinning, she had him pinned down, hands on his shoulders, straddling his legs. She had been smiling, he recalled -- a happy smile. Her grin had been a little bit drunk, because there had been sake at the wedding, but it was also very tender.

__

And I had a panic attack, he recalled.

He had gone totally still, heart racing in his chest, ears ringing, hyperventilating. He had flashed back to being a small boy, unable to defend himself ... he had felt totally helpless. Even though he could easily have thrown her against the wall and escaped without much effort, his mind insisted he was vulnerable and that very bad things were about to happen.

Kaoru had sensed the change in his mood and had grown very still. "Kenshin?" she had said, with complete calm and total assurance. "Please, trust me."

And he had, though it had taken every bit of his formidable self control to do so. He had trusted her to begin with, of course, but this was a different level -- it was _acceptance_. If she wanted to pin him down in a vulnerable position, he deliberately decided he was perfectly okay with him. He had known, in making that decision in that instant, that there would be no going back from that level of trust ... and, also, that he wouldn't regret it.

And then, shortly, he had discovered just how _erotic _it was to be on the bottom and at her mercy. He had expected Kaoru to be shy and uncertain, but when had she ever been hesitant about anything? The woman who had been willing to take on the hitokiri battousai with a wooden sword was certainly not going to be intimidated by the idea of sex with someone she completely loved and trusted.

Kenshin ran harder, faster, legs pumping, arms moving evenly, as the memories from the past surged up. He _knew _why he was remembering this. And he wasn't sure he liked it.

__

And she is so very scared. Not like Kaoru at all.

Kenshin hurdled a puddle caused by sprinklers. His jog had taken him to the shores of a small lake. He stopped, breath coming in gasps. _She sees me as a friend, nothing more. I must never forget that she is not Kaoru and I cannot violate the trust she has in me by acting on my basest instincts._

And I fear am only attracted to her because she reminds me so much of Kaoru, in so many ways.

After a moment, Kenshin started to walk back to the dorm. And then to run again, because he had been gone running for three hours and the time away from Carrie made him nervous for her safety.


	7. Chapter 7

"So Danny," Morgan said, a bit giddily, "Whatcha going to school for?"

Danny owned a small pickup; he was driving. Morgan had claimed shotgun, relegating Richie to the rather cramped jump seat behind them. He wasn't sure how that had happened -- he was bigger than she was. Chivalry, perhaps. _Adam says he was born before the age of chivalry. Can I claim to be born after it?_

Chiyoko was also helping Danny move into his dorm room; she had grinned and said, "I'm not _that _short!" when Danny had suggested she could fit between him and Morgan. She was ahead of them on her bike, weaving somewhat recklessly through traffic.

Joe claimed Chiyoko's ability to avoid traffic tickets was related to the typical Immortal ability to hide swords. Richie wasn't entirely sure that he was joking.

Danny took his time answering Morgan's question -- long enough for Richie to watch Chiyoko zip through a yellow light that they had to stop at. "Law," he said, finally. "I'm going for a degree in criminal science. I want to be a cop; you pretty much need a degree for that these days."

"Wow! A cop!"

Danny glanced at her. With a bit of a smirk, he said, "Surprised?"

Richie grinned, known Morgan couldn't see his expression -- Danny saw the look on his face in the rear view mirror and rolled his eyes, apparently not caring if she saw that. Well, Danny _looked _like he ought to be doing manual labor for a living. He was short, dark, Mexican (or half Mexican, but his mother had been Italian and just as dark), extremely fit, he had more than a little bit of an accent, and he had acquired several tattoos on his arms.

And, at the moment, he was also wearing a bandanna, a very battered pair of jeans, and a ripped, stained undershirt. _Gang member _might be a reasonable substitute for _manual laborer_ if people based their assumptions on his appearance alone. He didn't have a lot to move, but he had even fewer clothes, and had seen no point in getting his good clothes dirty.

Morgan stuttered, "N-no, no! Just -- a cop. Wow. I thought you were ..."

"Me eeeleeegal eeemegrant," he said, stretching all his 'i's out for effect when he said _illegal immigrant_. "Me no brain. Me estupieeedo. Me a gangsta. Yes, me know what you thought."

Sarcasm dripped from every word. Richie winced. "Danny graduated with honors, Morgan."

"Really? Wow."

"And he's not illegal. He was born here." Richie was moved to clarify, since Danny's words might have left doubt in her mind.

"Oh. Well, that's cool. A cop. Wow. I'm really impressed. And I didn't think you were stupid! Really!" She was babbling, and Richie rolled his eyes back at Danny when Danny looked into the mirror at him. Danny snorted.

__

Kenshin really _owes me for this_, Richie decided, as Morgan reached for the radio and started fiddling with it. Danny reached out, neatly caught her hand, and said, "What do you say?"

"Huh?"

"Say. Before you mess with my stuff."

__

And that would be Danny-the-punk emerging, Richie decided, with some amusement. Danny was a lot more civilized than he had been when Richie had first befriended him, several years before, but he had still had rough edges.

"Please can I turn on the radio?" Surprising Richie, Morgan's response was both civil and subdued.

Danny nodded curtly. "Just don't put something lame on. 101.1 usually has decent alternative."

-------------

"Guess I'm supposed to check in with the RA and get my room key and stuff," Danny said, frowning. He'd missed orientation due to his job -- he worked at Joe's bar doing everything from running errands to waiting tables. Richie had honestly been skeptical when Miya Dawson had given him the job because Danny undeniably had attitude and he was worried about how he would interact with the customers.

Danny, however, was highly motivated by money. Richie got that; he'd been hungry enough himself to have a keen appreciation of an honestly earned paycheck. So far, Danny had behaved himself, and Miya was quite happy with him. And he'd purchased the truck with his wages.

"Don't look at me," Richie shrugged. He wasn't about to volunteer the information that he was a high school dropout -- as a foster kid, he'd been in six different high schools by his Junior year when he had finally given up. He didn't have a clue about college.

Chiyoko snorted and said, too low for Morgan to hear, because she was trailing several feet behind them, "You think they'd _believe _me as a college kid?"

"Young genius," Danny suggested, "You know, Doogie Howser. Doogette? Howser."

"Okay, you've been watching classic TV _way _too much," Richie reached a hand out and ruffled Danny's hair, which was absolutely guaranteed to piss him off. He had to reach up to do so; Danny had grown quite a bit in the last few years. They were almost even in height now.

Danny swung a cuff at Richie's head. Laughing, Richie dodged the blow.

Inside, they climbed the steps to the second floor and found the RA's apartment at the head of the hall. His door was propped open, and he was talking to a young man with purple streaks in his hair. He looked up, saw them, said firmly, "Go on back to your room. I'll get someone to fix the plumbing."

The kid said, with a sneer, "You _better_," and hurried out.

"Wow. Attitude." Richie said, after the guy was gone.

The RA rolled his eyes. "His tap drips. Says it keeps him awake and he's demanding we call a plumber out today. -- Anyway, I'm Shannon Reilly. You must be Danny Rodriguez ..."

"Close," Richie said. Shannon had addressed _him_, not Danny. "I'm Richie Ryan, Danny's friend."

"Does he _look _like a Rodriguez?" Danny demanded.

"Um." Shannon blinked, then suddenly pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Sorry. No. It's been a long day -- started at four AM with someone waking me up about a roommate dispute. Somebody had a shoe thrown at them and I swear he wanted me to have her arrested for attempted murder."

Fascinated, Richie asked, "How heavy was the shoe?"

"It was a sneaker."

"Have to throw it pretty hard to kill someone with it," Chiyoko observed, frowning.

"It had shaving cream in it." Shannon rubbed his face with his fingers. Richie wondered if he had a headache. "Which is still not deadly, but he was apparently quite offended by it. Somebody vandalized his roommate's side of the room with shaving cream. I've never quite seen a mess that bad in my life. They must have used several dozen bottles of it. The whole hall smells like menthol, now. Ruined all his stuff."

"And then somebody threw a shoe?"

"Friend of the guy whose stuff got ruined. Yeah. The roommate wasn't helping with the cleanup."

Shannon ran a hand down his face, blew out an explosive sigh, and said, "I was going to split those two up -- I'm not convinced Michael wasn't behind the damage to Brandon's stuff. But Brandon's ..." he hesitated, eying Danny with a very curious expression. "Well. I'm not sure that's going to work. I'm not sure it'd be a good mix with you. Brandon's ..." again, he trailed off.

"Yeah?" Danny said, challengingly. "What, he'd have a problem with me?"

"I doubt it."

"Then what's the issue?" Danny growled. In that instant he looked a _lot _like trouble; Richie fought the urge to snicker. Danny-the-punk was about fifty percent act and fifty percent _not _act, but he was reasonably sure that Danny was putting his theatrical skills to work here simply because it was amusing him to make Shannon squirm. MacLeod joked that Danny's ability to give off a deadly aura would have made him an incredible swordsman in a past life; Danny would simply have scared his opponents to death by glowering at them.

Shannon shifted uncomfortably in his chair. _Literally squirm_, Richie thought, hiding a smile with a cough. "Umm. The problem with Brandon is finding _anyone _to room with him. He's gay. There's another two people on the floor who are openly gay, but they're already rooming together -- they're, uh, a couple. And we don't have the space to give Brandon his own room. I'd put him with a woman, because we have a few female singles and one even _offered _to let him stay with her, but that's against dorm policy."

Richie scratched his nose. "So you can't put a gay guy in with a woman even if the woman's willing to room with him, but you can have a gay couple together?"

Shannon flushed. "I don't make the rules."

"What about a boyfriend and a girlfriend?" Richie asked, with academic interest.

"Only a married couple. Look, I don't make the rules, and it was a bad idea. I just don't know what I'm going to do with Brandon!" Shannon's voice rose a desperate octave. Then he huffed a sigh. "He's going to get hurt again, I _know _it."

Danny exchanged a look with Richie. Richie snickered. Danny said, dryly, "I'd kill anyone who breaks into my room and messes with my stuff -- _or _his stuff."

"You'd share a room with him?"

Danny shrugged. "I've got a gay cousin, and I worry about him all the time. Better me rooming with him than some loser with issues."

"Umm." Shannon tilted his head, studying Danny curiously. Richie wanted to laugh -- he _knew _that Shannon was trying to figure Danny out. And that his assumptions based on Danny-the-punk's apearance were getting thoroughly overturned. "Okay, if you're cool with it."

"I'm fine." Danny said, without a smile. He did nothing to dispel his 'tough guy' image. Richie was now biting the inside of his cheek in an attempt to keep the laughter in. Methos claimed that if Danny were Immortal, he'd live millenia simply because nobody would ever Challenge him.

Shannon nodded, finally. "Brandon's not actually that bad of a guy. He's neat, and he's respectful. Tends to tease a bit, but if you're going to be okay with that ..."

Danny grinned, abruptly, relaxing. His smile revealed very white teeth that were perfectly aligned, but marred by one chipped incisor. "I think I can take a joke."

"As long as Brandon can deal with the sarcasm he'll get back," Chiyoko said, with a sudden laugh, "I doubt there will be a problem."

-------------

Kenshin was on his hands and knees, wiping up melted, sticky, half-dried clots of shaving cream from under Brandon's bed when he felt the buzz of other approaching Immortals. As casually as possible, he straightened up from the vulnerable position and said, "I've got to get something from my room. I'll be back in a moment."

Carrie said, in Japanese, "Trouble?"

"Probably just Chiyoko and Richie," Kenshin's knees popped when he stood up and he felt a flash of pain as the deep scar tissue on his back pulled tight. He was not quite as invulnerable to the effects of sleeping on the floor as he'd led Brandon to believe. And then he'd run a good fifteen miles before the others had even been awake. Rapid healing did not fix the damage done before his first death and he was stiffening up now. "Richie said Danny would be moving in today."

To his relief, it was Chiyoko and Richie -- with Danny and Shannon leading, and Morgan trailing them, arms folded and a frown on her face.

Kenshin waved. Richie shouted, "Ken!"

Behind him, he heard Carrie say, "Oh, Meg, that's the guy I told you about."

"Really?"

Kenshin glanced over his shoulder, amused by the exchange. He had been entertaining ideas of introducing Meg to Richie in the interest of _let's see what happens_; it looked like Carrie was a couple steps ahead of him, and all without knowing _why _Kenshin was curious to see what they would think of each other.

"Umm." Shannon stopped in the doorway. "You guys know each other?"

"Yeah, Ken's a friend," Richie said, happily.

"Why am I not surprised?" Shannon replied.

Kenshin studied Danny curiously. Danny had said very little to him, and had indeed seem to avoid him, the night before. Candidly, he said, to Shannon, "I'm friends with Richie and Chi-chan -- Danny and I got off on the wrong foot, I believe. I was in a pretty bad place in my life, and he got the worst end of it."

Danny snorted. And relaxed. He explained, "I tried to hit his lady. He reacted ... badly. We were both stupid."

Shannon's eyes grew very, very wide.

"I was a stupid punk, okay?" Danny sounded embarrassed. He held a hand out to Kenshin to shake. "Let's start this over, given we're going to be in the same dorm and likely seeing each other every damn day. I'm Daniel Rodriguez. Pleased to meet you."

Kenshin felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. Cheerfully, he grasped Danny's hand. "Kenny Myojin. It's a pleasure."

Shannon watched this exchange with a frown on his face. Then he cleared his throat and said, "Danny, this is Brandon. Brandon? Danny's going to swap out with Michael."

Brandon blinked. Once. Kenshin caught a flash of fear and aggression from him. He said, "Shannon ... umm ..." and trailed off.

"Got a problem with rooming with a Mexican?" Danny folded his arms.

Brandon took a step back. Then, in an equally snarky tone of voice, he shot back, "Got a problem with rooming with a gay cripple?"

"Nope."

"Then, nope." Brandon's smile was infectious as his shoulders sagged in utter relief. "Though mind, if you eat too many beans I'm throwing you out of the room."

Danny cracked up, a real laugh and open smile transforming his expression into something very different from the vaguely hostile glower. "If you've got a boyfriend, he does _not _get to spend the night."

Brandon giggled. "Only if the same goes for your girlfriends. -- Come on in. Michael's hiding in the bathroom ..." he banged on the bathroom door with his crutch as he passed. "Yo, Mikey, you can start packing now. Shannon took pity on both of us and found you a new room."

"Fuck you!" from the bathroom.

"In your dreams," Brandon replied, though he sounded dispirited when he said it. He sat down on his bed. To Shannon, he added, "Thank you, by the way. For finding me a new roommate. You probably saved me a murder conviction at some point."

"Dunno, Brandon. You might actually like jail." That came from Michael, in the bathroom.

Brandon didn't say anything, but he lifted an index finger at the bathroom door for their benefit. Richie grinned and shook his head. Michael had been hiding since they had shown up; Kenshin wasn't sure if that was a guilty conscious, or simply Michael being intimidated by the five of them: himself, Sandy, Meg, Carrie, and Brandon.

"Want some help cleaning up?" Richie offered. There was still quite a bit of shaving cream to be cleaned off the walls. Leaving the mess for the morning had been a mistake; the stuff dried to a sticky texture that was nearly impervious to water and needed to be soaked and scraped off in layers.

"Have a rag," Carrie said, and tossed one to Richie.

----------------

With several people working on Brandon's room, the place was spotless within an hour. Michael was moved out, into a room at the end of the hall, and Danny's stuff moved in. Danny frowned at the tape on the floor, then yanked it up without a word.

Kenshin was surprised, and saddened, by how little Danny owned -- they managed to bring his all belongings up in one trip from the truck. But also, he was -- in some weird way -- proud that this reincarnation of Yahiko had managed to drag himself out of abject poverty and earn a scholarship to a very good school while simultaneously holding down a regular job.

"Criminal justice," Danny was saying, to Brandon. "I've wanted to be a cop all my life. Help people, you know?"

Richie suddenly swore, and yanked his hand back from a box of Danny's that he had been unpacking. Blood dripped down his fingers, and he clutched his other hand over what was presumably a deep cut. "Something sharp in there!"

"Fuck, sorry man." Danny peered into the box. "Aw, shit." He retrieved a shattered glass snow globe from the packing material. He looked heartbroken. "My mother's music snow globe thingy. It broke."

"Oh, man, I'm sorry." Richie started to stuff his wounded finger in his mouth.

"Don't you do that!" Meg grabbed his hand before anyone could stop her. "Mouth's full of more germs than you could imagine. C'mere, I'll rinse it out ..."

"It's fine, really. It's just a little cut." Richie tried to reclaim his hand, and towed her a foot closer to him. She wasn't letting go.

"Little cut? That much blood, you nicked a vein. We need to get pressure on it ..." she peered at it.

"I'll go do that ..." Richie attempted again to convince her to let go of his finger. "It's a long way from my heart, Meg. I'll be fine."

"Nonsense. I'm a med student. I've studied this. You need to put pressure on that and then you might need stitches. Best to have a doctor look at it, there's all sorts of nerves and tendons in the hand, and ..."

"Meg," Carrie said, quietly, but with real concern, "let him have his hand back."

"Go get me a rag or something. A clean one. This is bleeding all over the place ... you don't have anything I should be worried about, do you? Infectious ..." Meg had blood all over her own fingers now. Her eyes were growing wider with realization that she'd put herself at risk.

"No! I'm not infected with anything. And ..." He yanked his hand back, made a fist, and said, defensively, "It's fine. I'll deal with it."

"You need to see a doctor!"

"It's. Fine." Richie ground out the words with a hint of desperation. Kenshin would have laughed, had he dared. He was reasonably sure Meg could be trusted with their secret -- she had known, once before, after all -- but he also fully empathized with Richie's desire to keep his Immortality under wraps. Kenshin was willing to bet that the cut, which was quite minor by Immortal standards, was already healed.

"What, scared of doctors?" Meg said, with a hint of annoyance in her voice. "That's right over a joint. If it gets infected, you'll regret it. And if any of the tendons were nicked you're going to be in a world of hurt."

"I'll deal with it." Richie stalked out of the room, looking aggravated. For a moment, Kenshin's memories superimposed a much taller man, with similarly untidy hair, wearing a red bandanna and a white coat with _bad _printed on the back. He smiled faintly.

"What are you grinning about?" Meg snapped at him.

"Huh? Oro! Nothing. Nothing at all." Kenshin smiled innocently at her. He was moved to add, "Richie's really not as bad as he seems."

"He just doesn't like doctors," Meg said, sounding vexed. "That cut really is in a bad place."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine." Danny tossed the broken pieces of his snow globe into the trash, then flopped carelessly backwards onto his bed. "I'll make sure he sees a doctor if there's any trouble with his hand." He paused, then added sadly. "That snow globe was all I had of my mother. She died when I was little. It's a funny thing to be attached to, kinda tacky, but I was. I bought it for her with my allowance at Disneyland when I was ten, on a trip with my dad."

Kenshin eyed the garbage can for a moment. "I'll go ahead and take that out for you. I imagine you don't want the reminder in here."

"Thanks ..." Danny sighed.

-------

He was digging through the trash bag, in front of his room, with the intent of retrieving the snow globe's ceramic base when Shannon stepped out of his doorway. The man saw him and waved. "Kenny! Can I talk to you a moment?"

Kenshin held a finger up, indicating, _just a moment_, and set what he'd salvaged down on his desk in his room. The base was undamaged, just the glass had been broken. It was of Belle and the Beast, with the supporting characters at their feet. That accomplished, he went to see what Shannon wanted.

Shannon frowned at him for a long moment before speaking. "You seem to actually have a brain, Kenny."

"Oro, really?"

Shannon snorted. "What I mean is, you're smarter than the rest of that lot. And they respect you. I just wanted to give you a warning -- Michael's _mad_. I'm not sure if he was really behind the mess in Brandon's room or not, but he was just here claiming, I quote, that he was 'kicked out of his room by a fag'."

"It was a trade." Kenshin shook his head. "I don't understand how people like that think, that I don't. He was just moved to a new room to prevent trouble."

"I honestly don't understand that level of anger either, Kenny," Shannon said, candidly. Then he bit his lip, as if he'd said too much. But, after a moment, he continued, "Look, I don't approve of Brandon. But I really, really don't want him getting hurt. Or anyone else. Which is why I'm warning you -- make sure everyone's careful, okay?"

"I will. And thank you for the warning." Kenshin hesitated, then asked, "The key cards -- do you have a record of who goes in and out a door?"

Shannon pressed his lips together in a thin line. "Yes. We do. I've already had my boss pull the records. The only cards swiped all day on Brandon's room lock were Michael's and Brandon's. _Nobody _swiped their card during the dinner hour, when the damage was done, and both of them were in the cafeteria. I'm guessing that the door was somehow left ajar. The system's not quite sophisticated enough to show that."

"Or Michael left, but let someone else into the room first," Kenshin said, thoughtfully. "Giving him an alibi because he was seen in the cafeteria later."

Shannon held a hand out, palm up. "That's a possibility I didn't think of."

Kenshin gave him a tight-lipped smile in return. "Well, at any rate, at least they're not sharing a room anymore."

"Yes. Still. Be careful."

"Aa. I'll keep an eye on him. And thank you, again."


	8. Chapter 8

"Whatcha doing?" Sandy leaned over Kenshin's shoulder.

"Looking for an unbroken one of these," Kenshin indicated the snow globe base. He was on E-bay on his laptop.

"What is it?" Sandy said, puzzled.

"It was a snow globe, that it was." Kenshin grinned, as he found one that matched. It was cheap, too -- it had a "Buy It Now" price of $10. He cheerfully placed his order, then leaned back in his chair.

"Why are you buying a Disney snow globe?"

"It's for Danny."

Sandy contemplated that for a long moment. He apparently decided not to pursue the subject further, because he said, "Err -- about Danny. Is he going to be okay, really, with ..." Sandy trailed off. "I'm just a little bit protective of my brother."

Kenshin nodded. "Don't judge him by his appearance. Danny will be fine." _Once upon a time, you loved him as if he was your brother. _"Danny's from a pretty tough environment, and most of what you see -- the tough act -- is protective camouflage. He's a good guy, I do believe, and if you treat him fairly he'll be a good friend."

Sandy flopped face first onto his bed. He groaned, "I hope you're right, Kenny. -- Shit, we have one day of freedom left before school starts. You got any plans for tomorrow?"

"I was just going to go for a run in the morning but I'm free, afterwards. Why?"

"Brandon was telling me about a swimming hole, outside of town. You've got a truck. We were hoping to persuade you to play chauffeur." Sandy hesitated. Kenshin suspected that the hesitation was fear of imposing on Kenshin and his truck and nothing more. "That is, if you're interested."

Kenshin nodded. It had been a very long time since he'd swum in a creek, though he was actually rather fond of it -- and he had good memories of the waterfall and the pool beneath it near Hiko's cabin. Sometimes, when he had been very young, he had even been able to persuade his formidable master to join him in the water on very hot days. Hiko had been daringly bold when diving from the rocks, and _swimming _on hot summer days was one of the few times he had ever seen his master unbend and enjoy life.

He said, happily, "That sounds like fun, and a good diversion. Maybe we should invite Carrie and Meg as well." His hindbrain thought, _Carrie in a swimsuit_, and only barely avoided blushing. He added, savagely, to himself, _I am a dirty old man, that I am. She doesn't see me that way._

"Giiiirrrls." Sandy drawled his words out. "And by the way, you and Carrie are just _right _together."

Since Sandy's words came flush on the heels of his somewhat testosterone-driven thoughts, Kenshin did blush. He protested, "Maaa! She's just a friend."

"That's what they all say," Sandy apparently wasn't fooled -- likely, because Kenshin was turning bright red. He rolled over onto his back and laced his puppy-large hands together behind his head. "Right before falling passionately in love." He propped one foot up on top of the other. "Can we fit everyone in your truck?"

"There's five seatbelts. We'll be cramped, but we can all fit." Kenshin didn't bother to address the comments on Carrie.

------------------

"Swimming?" Meg wrinkled her nose at Kenshin. "In a creek? There's all sorts of nasties in creek water. Giardia and cryptosporidium and e-coli an ..."

"You're no fun," Carrie elbowed her. The two girls stood in the door of their dorm, having responded to Kenshin's knock that evening. Carrie had opened the door suspiciously quickly; Kenshin wondered if she'd sensed his _ki_ and, if so, if that was indicative of her Immortality or if it was simply swords training. He needed to get her alone and ask. Carrie, still teasing Meg, added, "She won't swim in the ocean, either."

"Add all of the above, plus jellyfish and sea urchins and sharks and ..."

"Oh, give it a rest." Carrie snorted at Meg. "You're planning on going to that party here, anyway."

"Guilty," Meg said, without a trace of remorse. "You'll have to have fun swimming in the creek without me. There will be some hot guys at the party. Sure you want to go with Red here?"

Kenshin said diffidently, to Carrie, "If you had plans with Meg, I have no problems with that."

She shook her head, a little too quickly. Her eyes were bright when she said, "Swimming sounds fun."

"Particularly since Red's going," Meg elbowed her back.

"Meg!" Carrie protested, loudly, whipping around on Meg and glaring at her with ferocious anger. "We're just friends. Will you _knock it off_? It's not funny anymore and you're embarrassing me!"

"Might be best," Kenshin said, quietly, but in a cool tone of voice that made both of them look quickly at him, "If you didn't tease her about it, Meg. You're truly upsetting her and neither of us find that very funny."

Meg rocked back on her heels. Then she mumbled, "Sorry," and retreated back into the room.

Kenshin sighed. She did mean well, but it made him angry to see Carrie so upset. He was getting very irritated at Meg; her constant hassling of Carrie was picking at his own wounds, including ones he'd thought were long scabbed over even if they would never fully heal. _Even if Carrie doesn't view me as anything but her good friend, a part of me will always see her as Kaoru -- a part of her _is _Kaoru -- and I cannot bear to see Kaoru hurt by anyone. _He knew this with clear self awareness. After an awkward silence he said, to Carrie, "I'm going jogging in the morning, and then I'm going to do some katas in the gymnasium. Want to come with me?"

Her eyes brightened again. He was surprised by how happy she looked to be invited to work out with him. "Yeah, sure!"

"Is five AM too early for you?"

"No, it's cooler then, for the running." Carrie had no problem with rising early, apparently -- well, she'd been trained from a young age for swordsmanship and likely her father had woken her up for early-morning runs as well. Stamina was a critical part of surviving a swordfight; the best way he knew to build endurance was lots of jogging.

--------------

Carrie kept easy pace with him the next morning, her longer legs taking five strides for every six that he pounded out. She had an easy, almost deerlike, grace to her when she ran but he glanced sideways once or twice, and noted that her pretty purple sports bra -- _ah! the joys of modern athletic fashions! -- _didn't quite keep everything from jiggling.

__

Perverted old man, he thought, savagely, at himself. He kept his eyes ahead, after noticing that. _She's dressed like that because it's the current fashion and because it's a muggy morning. That is all._

They didn't talk much but it was a comfortable silence. He was discovering that he could be in Carrie's company and not need to say anything; that he just enjoyed being in her presence. It had been that way with Kaoru, too; Atsuko, on the other hand, had filled every gap in the conversation with amusing anecdotes and joking observations -- sometimes, he'd teased her about slipping her some Ritalin in her coffee to slow her down. She had chattered constantly to the point of occasionally annoying him, but after she had died he had found he desperately missed being aggravated at her.

Tomoe, before them both ... he had been hurting so bad, then, he had often said little to her. She, likewise, had been absorbed by her own pain and grief. They had never carried on casual conversations; had not bantered with each other, or talked about their hopes and dreams. Sometimes he wondered how they would have made out, had she not died -- what sort of relationship would they have had?

He liked Tammy, Tomoe's incarnation. In truth, he was rather fond of her, and he'd made a mental note to take her out to lunch in the near future. But he had never been attracted to her. There was a difference, he concluded, between comfortable silence and simply lacking anything to say. After an hour or two with Tammy he ran out of topics of conversation. They _cared_ abouteach other, but they didn't have much in common, and short of repeating old stories, there just wasn't much they could talk about without boring each other.

Which brought him right back around to Carrie. _I could spend a thousand years in your presence, Carrie-dono, and never grow bored._

After a few miles of running at a comfortable pace they reached the school's fitness center by a roundabout path. Carrie wasn't the slightest bit winded, though a fine sheen of perspiration clung to her skin. "Nobody's using the racquetball courts, and they're about the right size for a match, if you'd like to spar with me," she said, offhandedly, as she leaned over to fiddle with the laces on her right sneaker.

"I'd ... rather not." Her offer nonplussed him. He blinked several times in rapid succession as he processed her offer. He hadn't really thought about sparring with Carrie with wooden swords.

"Why not?" It was a casual question -- she was absorbed by fiddling with her shoe. He saw that the lace had broken and she was knotting it. "I was here Wednesday; I've got a locker rented and I put some bokken in it." She glanced up at him, dark curly hair falling across her face. Her eyes were very blue.

"I don't ..." He blew out a puffing breath. "I'm afraid I might hurt you."

"Good," she said, straightening up. "I mean, Kenshin, seriously. My father's probably done far worse to me than anything you'd ever do. And they're _bokken_ -- the worst you can do is leave me with some bruises."

That wasn't the reason at all, actually. The real reason he didn't want to spar with her was complicated and multilayered. Party of it was, yes, sexist and chauvinistic: though his only student had been a girl, he had not been attracted to Chiyoko. He found Carrie absolutely beautiful and his gut tied itself in knots at the thought of hitting her with a sword. It was just the way he was. He didn't want inflict pain on her.

"Kenshin," she said, seriously, looking him in the eyes. "I need to practice with someone as often as possible. Someday I will need to fight for my life. You're my best option, though I _do _intend to train with Mac and Richie if they'll agree to it. I am _not _afraid of a few bruises. I am very afraid of losing my head."

Bald words, and they left his mouth too dry to respond. He glanced down at her ribs, where the cut that she had gotten in a match two days before was nowhere near healed. He swallowed hard a couple of times, then nodded once and found his voice and said, "Get the bokken."

------------

They had an audience as soon as they started. The indoor racquetball court had a glass wall and people gathered to watch the fight. Not many, because it was very early still, but enough.

Kenshin didn't care. He wasn't using Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu's special moves. As fitting his cover story of being a Myojin, he was restricting himself to the moves and techniques of the Kamiya school of swordsmanship. While it wasn't _his _school he'd watched Kaoru often enough to expertly duplicate the moves. If people wanted to watch he had no problem with that; he saw little reason to hide his interest in swordsmanship. It was a bit of an unorthodox hobby for the modern era but not a completely unknown one: witness the prevalence of college fencing clubs and the popularity of martial arts in the media.

__

Besides, I'm Japanese. Half the Western world has some very weird ideas about Japan.

However, it wasn't until Carrie startled him with an unorthodox and brilliant move that he realized an important fact about _her _style. She got past his defenses and scored a stinging slap to his upper arm and he was so startled he stopped in the middle of the match and stared at her.

Carrie had been trained by Soujiro Seta, who had been trained by Shishio Makoto. Shishio and Soujiro had been two of the toughest opponents of his life.

And Carrie was good.

Carrie was _very _good.

She didn't have Soujiro's speed when she attacked. Soujiro was one of the kind in that respect. However, her style reminded him strongly of her father in other respects. And she was better, in a few; his question about whether or not she could read ki was answered wordlessly within a few minutes. She was a step ahead of him, anticipating his moves and guessing his intentions, most of the time.

He had seen her fight Amanda, but even so, he had not been expecting her to be a true challenge for him. He had been expecting her to be like Kaoru -- Kaoru had been very talented, and able to hold her own against an average opponent, but she had been nowhere near his league in ability. Carrie was different. He realized this moments into the match.

Was it something to do with her build? he wondered, as they circled each other. Physically, she was much more athletic than Kaoru had been. Kaoru had been _short_, and not particularly muscular. She had been born during a time of war and famine; she had grown up hungry much of the time, and deprived of necessary protein and vitamins and minerals. Everyone, then, had suffered the effects of those hard times. Kenshin suspected his own lack of height had something to do with his early diet as well.

Had her early life affected Kaoru's fighting ability, he wondered?

Because Carrie was brilliant. Better than he had believed possible. Better than he had ever expected.

She was _built _for fighting, he realized, watching her. For a woman, she had a surprising amount of muscle. She was tall, by his standards, but not excessively so for a modern woman -- and not too tall to be nimble and quick on her feet. As with Soujiro and Shishio she made a lot of use of _running_ -- he found himself puffing and out of breath as he tried to keep up. Now he understood why she hadn't been winded by the jog.

Or perhaps it was simply the fact that she had trained from an early age with a true master. Kaoru's father had died when she was young, and it was certain that he was not in the same league of skill as Soujiro Seta. Carrie had been trained by a man who had fought hard and often to the death since childhood.

"C'mon, Kenshin. I _know _you're better than this!" she said, after dealing him a smart blow to the hand.

Well, he was -- he was just flummoxed by the realization that she was good enough to be a real challenge to him. He quit worrying about accidentally hurting her. He started worrying about winning.

She was laughing as she fought him. Teasingly, she said, "Surprised you?"

"Quite a lot!" He readily confessed.

He won. He suspected once they'd sparred together for several months that wouldn't always be the case, even if he gave it a hundred percent honest effort to win. He was pleased beyond belief by this revelation. He had expected that she would always need protection from evil Immortals bent on taking her head; that she would be weaker than he was, and slower, and in need of a guardian.

"You're grinning," she observed.

"You're _good_, Carrie-dono," he breathed, as he stood with his hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. In one respect she was better than he was, and that was cardiovascular fitness. She was barely winded. He knew _why _that was -- more 'early life' influence on his growth. Plus, her legs were longer. He had to work hard to keep up with her, and her style of fighting involved lots of running around the room.

She grinned and tossed her hair back and said, "I know."

"Seriously." He wiped sweat from his eyes. "I rather enjoyed that, and usually, I don't care for sparring with others. It is necessary, to keep my own skills sharp, but rarely do I _enjoy _it."

He straightened up, feeling a twinge of pain in his back. She had tested him to his limits. This was an amazing, miraculous, delightful thing. "Carrie-dono, this one is most impressed by your abilities."

She blinked a couple of times, then said, "I suggest: showers, breakfast, then go see if the others are awake."

"Aa," he agreed, studying her in a whole new light.

--------------

After showering and, as Carrie put it, de-grungifying themselves, they walked back to the dorm. It was a huge campus, and the walk was at least a half mile. The sun was up now, and it promised to be a hot day.

Carrie, now dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, walked beside him, hands in her pockets. She looked around alertly, missing little. They were passed by other joggers, and then a stream of students hurrying to the cafeteria. She glanced towards that building and wrinkled her nose.

He caught the expression and said, "We could go to Denny's, if you want."

She hesitated, a long moment, then confessed, "I can't afford it. My father's sending me an allowance every month but it's really not much, Kenshin. It's all he can spare."

"I will pay," he said, instantly.

"No, Kenshin," she rested her hand on his arm, stopping him. "You do enough for me."

__

My debt to you is endless and bottomless and as wide as the oceans, Kenshin thought, but could not say. Without Kaoru, he would not be who he was today. Instead he said brightly, "We'll make it a trade. I buy you the occasional meal and you help this old man with his math homework."

She snorted.

"Believe this one when he says it's an unequal trade. I am _not _good in math and I will need your help." It was a growled complaint; he had never needed more math than was necessary to balance his checkbook before.

She giggled now. "Okay, okay."

----------------

Carrie neatly tore the end off the straw's paper and blew a puff of air through it. The paper flew at his head, and Kenshin, startled, grabbed it out of the air with lightning speed and all the accuracy of Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu. The Denny's waitress clucked disapprovingly as she walked away after having delivered their drinks.

Carrie giggled. She'd been doing a lot of that this morning. Her laughter was like music to his ears; Kenshin realized, in that moment, that he'd do pretty much anything to see her smile or hear her laugh.

He blew his straw paper back at her. Her response -- a ducking swat at the bit of wrapper -- made him grin.

------------

Shannon was talking to Brandon when they reached their floor: both men stood in the hallway. Brandon's expression was defiant, Shannon's posture was placating. Kenshin overheard, "Look, Brandon, I'm just saying that it's not a good idea to antagonize him."

"What happened?" Kenshin asked, approaching.

Brandon shifted his weight from crutch to crutch and wouldn't meet Kenshin's eyes. Shannon snorted and explained, "They got in a screaming argument in the hall."

Kenshin's eyebrows rose.

Brandon's lowered and he said, sullenly, "The asshole tried to trip me in the hall. Kenny, I fell once when I was a kid and broke my arm. I ended up in a wheelchair until it healed. I need both hands to walk ..." he lifted one crutch off the ground and waved it around. "In a wheelchair is _not _how I want to start the school year."

Shannon said, "Yes, but you were antagonistic ..."

"He started it!" Brandon ground out, stomping the crutch into the ground to punctuate his angry words. "I've had it with that asshole, Shannon. You need to do your job and do something about him!"

Shannon rolled his eyes. "If I do something, it's going to be to _both _of you. If you weren't so confrontational and 'out there', Brandon, you wouldn't have nearly the trouble you do -- trust me on this one. _You _make my job practically impossible to do."

Brandon glared.

Shannon glowered right back. Then he said, shortly, "I know you think I hate you. I don't. I just think you're a complete idiot."

"Like you've never had idiotic moments of your own!" Brandon was angry enough that he wasn't really thinking of his words; he was just lashing out in furious anger. "It's people like you, who think we should be quiet and meek and stay in the closet if we don't want trouble, that allow the bigotry to continue!"

Shannon was silent for a long, long, long moment. Then, coldly, he said, "Not all of us are cut out for activism, Brandon."

Angry spots of color lit Brandon's cheeks. "What! Because I'm on crutches? Because I'm a fucking cripple, you think that I can't _make a difference_? You think I can't stand up for what's right because I'm not physically perfect? Part of standing up for what's right is making sure those in charge _do their jobs_ and enforce the rules! He's harassing me and you're in charge -- I'll go over your head if I have to, but by _not _enforcing the rules _you _are helping perpetuate the problem!"

Shannon folded his arms and looked away. Kenshin was struck by a sudden familiarity in that pose. And he wondered, had Brandon's assumption been what Shannon actually meant? He blinked and stared with wide amethyst eyes as nagging recognition dawned. Oh, surely not ...

"Feh!" Brandon slammed his crutch into the ground again. "I'm going out to Mason's Creek this afternoon with my friends. _You are an useless ass!_"

"Brandon! You can't talk to me that way!"

"I just did!"

Kenshin said, in a gentle voice that nonetheless caused both men to give him their full attention. "Brandon, I do not believe that Shannon was talking about you when he said some people were not cut out for activism."

Shannon sighed and ran a hand over his head. "No. I wasn't. Brandon -- I respect your courage, but too often you are simply foolhardy. I _worry about you _getting hurt. As do your friends."

Brandon blinked. Frowned. He glanced from Shannon to Brandon and back. Then, grumpily, he said, "I'm sorry I called you an ass, then. What _did _you mean?"

"Nothing," Shannon said, very warily. He added, "Have fun at Mason's Creek. Umm. I'd tell _everyone _be careful on the rocks, so -- be careful." He said this cautiously, clearly uncertain about how it would be received.

"Mmm." Brandon mumbled something very noncommittal. He added, to Kenshin, "I'll be ready in a few minutes if we're going to leave right away."

"Aa, I'll be ready. We just need to get our swim suits and towels."

Shannon was silent for a long moment. Then he said, quietly, "Mason's Creek is beautiful. Just stay out of the old mine. I wish they'd seal it up."

Kenshin said, cheerfully, "You know, I've got another seat in the truck if you want to come."

Brandon shot him a look of utter betrayal. Kenshin ignored that. Brandon would get over it. And if his suspicions about who Shannon had once been proved true ... well, Brandon might actually thank him. Someday. Because Kenshin had just figured Shannon out. And the man made _much _more sense now.

Shannon's brows drew together and he frowned at Kenshin.

"School starts tomorrow, that it does. It'd be one last fling," Kenshin suggested.

"You're _obviously _a freshman if you think this is the last chance for a party until next summer," Shannon muttered, without changing his doubtful expression much. Then he turned to Carrie and asked, "You're coming?"

Carrie didn't look any more pleased by this idea than Brandon did. Both of them were glaring at him. Kenshin said cheerfully, "She is."

"And if you hit on me, I'll hit back." Carrie folded her arms.

Shannon held his hands up. "I get the idea. You're a frigid bitch who likes her men shorter and prettier than she is."

Kenshin winced. Brandon took a deep breath, probably planning on launching into a ferocious defense of Carrie. Carrie, however, _laughed. _And, to Kenshin's amazement, she didn't exactly deny Shannon's assessment of her interest in him, either, which was an absolute first. She said, "You got that right, jock-boy."

Shannon snorted.

Kenshin didn't really expect him to say yes to the offer. But Shannon said abruptly, "Okay. But only because I'm worried about the lot of you getting into trouble in Mason's Creek. Somebody gets hurt there every year."

"Hey!" Carrie protested, "We can take care of ourselves ..."

"Sure you can," Shannon said, placatingly.

"Maa, maa, just come because you'll have fun," Kenshin didn't rise to the bait. "You weren't planning anything exciting for today, were you?"

"Nah, I'm the RA. I never get invited to the good parties. They think I'm a goody-two-shoes." Shannon glanced at Carrie, at Kenshin, then at Brandon. Brandon gave him a hard, angry stare. Shannon's lips twisted up into a sudden smile. "Okay. Just because it'll cheese off Brandy here ..."

"Hey!" Brandon objected, strongly, to the nickname by swinging one of his crutches at Shannon's shins. "You're one to tease about girly names, _Shannon_!"

Shannon jumped back, cheerfully flipped him off, then headed down hall. "I'll go get my swimsuit."

Brandon and Carrie both whipped around and glared at him. "_Why _did you invite him?" Carrie demanded.

"He's horrible to me!" Brandon chimed in.

"The best way to get rid of an enemy," Kenshin said quietly, "is to make a friend of him. And -- Brandon, I think he was talking about himself when he said some people weren't cut out for activism."

Brandon rocked back on his heels, moving both crutches back a couple of feet and straightening up. He stared down at Kenshin. Who grinned. "_No way_. There is _no way _that Shannon Reilly bats for the other team. Absolute not. He hits on every girl here. By the end of the year he'll have dated half the women in school. I watched him in action last year."

Kenshin tilted his head sideways and considered Brandon's proclamation. "Was he breaking hearts?"

"Sometimes." Brandon hunched his shoulders, and considered the question. "Not, admittedly, in any way that was his fault. He's pretty clear he's not looking for long-term relationships, just fun dates. He's got a whole fan club of girls he goes out with -- I was kindof surprised that Carrie didn't accept his offer for a date. He's pretty hot. But sometimes girls take him too seriously, and don't _believe _him when he says he's not interested in anything but casual dating."

"He's a jerk," Carrie tossed her hair back over her shoulders. "I have better taste in men than that."

Brandon was silent, however, for a long moment. "Kenny, I think you might be right. It does make sense."

Kenshin folded his arms and bowed his head and thought hard for a moment. "Brandon, Carrie, can I ask you not to start any rumors about this? He clearly is working very hard to keep it quiet."

"Well, _yeah_," Brandon stabbed the ground with the tip of one of his crutches. "He's Shannon Reilly. His granddad owns KR Enterprises. There's lots of money there, and plenty of political influence. And they're a very conservative, very, very religious family. God only knows what he's heard about gays his whole life, though I could make some educated guesses."

Kenshin nodded. "I figured it was something like that."

--------------

He was carrying a borrowed cooler of ice out to his truck when he felt the buzz of another Immortal. Kenshin quickly spotted the source of the buzz: to his relief, it was Chiyoko, parking her little motorcycle up against a telephone pole. She saw him, waved, dismounted, and pulled a chain and padlock from her backpack.

He walked over to her. "Chi-chan, good morning! What brings you out here?"

"Morning, Ken. I'm just a little worried about Richie, is all."

"With Morgan?" It was an easy guess.

"Hai." She folded her arms and looked away, clearly ill at ease. "That girl just ... well, she makes my trouble-meter peg clear over into the red. I was over at Richie's last night, we were playing Final Fantasy 20, and she wouldn't come out of her room ...What, exactly, do you know about her?"

"Not a huge amount, I'm afraid. Just that she witnessed a murder and that the man who did it has a ton of connections and threatened to have her killed if she talked. And meant it. George Trevor is trying to find out more details for me, but the police are being very closed mouthed and Morgan hasn't volunteered much to me."

The cooler of ice was heavy; he hitched it up higher and said, "Walk with me to my truck, will you? I want to drop this off."

"Going somewhere?" she asked, with interest.

"Mason's Creek."

"Ooh, nice. Be careful on the rocks."

"Want to come?"

Her eyes lit up. "Sure."

"Kenshin, I got that ..." Shannon said, behind both of them. Kenshin turned around in time for Shannon to grab the ice chest from his hands. Shannon hoisted it up to his shoulder and headed for Kenshin's truck.

Chiyoko stared after him. "Ooh, nice."

"Down, girl," Kenshin said, with a smirk at her reaction. He hesitated, regarded Chiyoko for a long moment, then said, slowly, "Have you ever noticed souls that have returned from the past?"

"What, like Richie and Danny?" Chiyoko said, with a grin that said she knew all about them. "I was wondering if you'd picked up on that."

"Ahem. So you know." He felt an amazing amount of relief at that. Chiyoko had known them in the past, too; that she had realized who Richie and Danny were was confirmation that he wasn't completely nuts. Too, she was someone he could talk to about things.

"Yeah." Chiyoko snorted. "I've known for a few years. It took me a bit to figure out why the two of them felt so familiar -- I only knew them for a year, remember? But I think they're reincarnations of Sano and Yahiko, right?"

"Aa, I believe so too. And look at Shannon and tell me who you see."

Her eyes narrowed and she squinted at the back of his head. Then she sighed and murmured, "Oh, Shinya ... damnit, what's happened to him? There's a stain on his heart."

"I'm not entirely sure ..." Kenshin sighed. He was glad at her confirmation. "I'd like to find out. And help him. He was a pure-hearted child, when we knew him in the past."

"Bit of a gormless idiot at times," Chiyoko snorted, "but yes, you're right."

"Kenny!" Sandy shouted, from the lobby door. Kenshin turned around to see the rest of the party exiting the building and heading towards him.

He leaned over to Chiyoko and said, very low, hand concealing his mouth, and in Japanese, "From left to right, Kaoru, Kenji, and Byron. Megumi is here too -- she's Carrie's roommate."

Chiyoko's eyes grew very, very wide. Then they narrowed. He saw both amusement and raging curiosity there. "Oh, I am so going with you. Mason's Creek, you said? I'm going to go home and get my suit and come back and play fly on the wall. If you don't mind."

"Chi-chan, they have no idea, and I'm not planning to tell them. -- However, since I'm spilling the beans to you, you should know that Tammy is Tomoe. And she _does _know that she is a reincarnation of my past wife; she guessed."

Chiyoko said, sharply, "What the fuck? Why are they _all _here?"

"That's what I would like to know." Kenshin sighed, and straightened up. "You are welcome to come, Chi-chan."

--------------------

Kenshin was squished uncomfortably between Carrie and Brandon in the front of his truck; he'd given Carrie his keys and had her drive. The truck had a bench seat in the front and if he had pulled it forward far enough for his feet to reach the pedals then Brandon, with his long legs, would not have been comfortable in the front. And nobody was proposing trying to put Brandon into the back.

Sandy grumbled with good-natured pathos, "Kenshin, I thought you said this truck seated five people. I think you meant five midgets."

"Well, it'd fit five of _me_," Kenshin glanced over his shoulder. Sandy, at well over six feet tall, had his knees pressed into the back of the seat and he was still twisted sideways to fit. "I can't help it if the rest of you are European giants."

Shannon snorted. "It'd fit ten of you."

"Hey! He's not that short!" Carrie twisted around to glare at Shannon.

"Eyes on the road, Carrie-dono," Kenshin, survivor of decades of teaching young people to drive, said out of pure habit because they were currently doing fifty-five down a country road.

"Yes, o-senpei," she murmured at him.

"Oro!" He protested, in Japanese, "Carrie-dono, mind my cover story!"

She snorted.

"What did he say?" Shannon asked.

"He just confessed undying love for me," Brandon put in, fluttering his eyes at Kenshin.

"Okay, let me out of this truck _now_," Shannon demanded -- jokingly. "Brandon's being gay and he's scaring me."

Kenshin laughed, then fell silent when he realized he was the only person who had reacted to Shannon's banter with chuckles. Everyone else was staring at Shannon as if he had suddenly grown a second head.

"Carrie! Eyes! Road!" Kenshin snapped at her, impatiently.

Shannon hunched his shoulders and muttered under his breath, "This was a bad idea ..."

"I think," Kenshin said carefully, "that they're not sure how serious that statement was, so nobody's sure if they should laugh."

"It wasn't serious. Okay? God, you guys have no sense of humor." Shannon folded his arms. He looked suddenly defensive and anxious. "Carrie, maybe you had better take me back to the dorm. This isn't going to work. You guys are never going to even give me a chance."

"I'm willing to let you prove yourself a good man," Kenshin said, quietly.

The silence in the car was deafening. After a moment, Carrie reached for the radio -- and Kenshin reached out and caught her fingers before she could turn it on. He said, quietly, "Sometimes, it is far easier to hate than it is to extend a hand of friendship. Ne? Particularly when you're not sure how the other person will react, or if they're even worthy of being your friend. I've learned that the effort and risk of taking a chance is often worth it, however."

"Profound," Shannon said, sarcastically.

Kenshin winced at that blistering tone. However, he kept the same calm tone when he said to Brandon, "You want people to accept you as you are. Sometimes, people find it easier to accept those who are not quite as confrontational as you often act."

Brandon snorted.

Kenshin agreed with Shannon's point, and said, "It is true, Brandon. I sympathize with your desire to be accepted for yourself, but sometimes it seems as if you try to provoke a reaction out of people. I understand that this may help you determine who you can immediately trust, but it also makes you enemies -- and even those who would not be your enemy may find you difficult to befriend because of this."

This earned him a sullen rumble from Brandon. "I thought this was going to be a fun trip."

Shannon sighed. "Kenshin, thank you for what you're trying to do here. You're a good guy, I think. Just --" he changed his focus to Brandon, abruptly, "Brandon, I keep telling you that you're going to get into trouble if you're not more careful; one of my ..." he trailed off. "... I _know _people who would hurt you."

"So do I," Brandon said.

In a smaller voice, Shannon said, "I have _family _who would hurt you, and be proud of themselves, after."

Kenshin said, without turning around again, "How painful it must be for you to have family like that."

"Yeah." Shannon fell silent. Then with sudden, explosive bitterness, he snapped, "Brandon, you ever get sent to a boarding school that promised your parents it would teach you a proper 'interest' in the opposite sex? Or get teased by your own father in front of all your friends because your hair was a quarter inch too long? Or there was the time I got caught playing with my sister's Barbies. I was _five_. I got a spanking I still haven't forgotten, because my father said he wouldn't have a sissy-boy for a son."

Abruptly, Shannon shut his mouth. When nobody else said anything, he requested again, "Carrie, can you take me back to the college? I don't know why I agreed to come with you people."

Carrie said, very softly, "If you want. It's going to be a lovely day for swimming."

"You people, judging me, kinda kills the mood." Shannon's bitterness hadn't abated.

"Did they really send you to a boarding school?" Brandon said, in disbelief. "I mean, I know stuff like that happens, but ... hell. I knew I was gay when I was about _ten._"

Sandy, who had been quiet until now, piped up, "Brandon, Mom says she knew you were gay when you were about _two_."

"Anyway." Brandon rolled his eyes in response to Sandy's teasing. "Let's just say I never had to come out; my parents did figure it out before me, apparently, as Sandy said. My _mother _let me know she knew where my interests lay one day, in about eighth grade, when she caught me watching some hot guy playing basketball with a little more than casual interest. She leaned over and asked me if I liked what I saw, then _laughed _at me when I blushed. And then simply told me not to worry about it, and that she and Dad were cool with it. That was in eighth grade."

"You were what, twelve?" Kenshin guessed. "You probably would have been embarrassed even if it was a girl you were watching."

"Yeah, probably." Brandon snickered. "I went to prom with another guy, though. Justin Allegra. He was adorable."

"He cheated on you," Sandy said, sounding resentful and annoyed.

Brandon shrugged. "I'm over it."

"He made you _cry_." Sandy growled. "He called you a _cripple _to your _face_ in front of me!"

"Hey! Alexander!" Brandon objected to that revelation. "They don't need to know that. Please!"

"Maa, maa, guys ..."

Shannon suddenly said, "Yeah. Dad sent me to the boarding school."

Brandon physically flinched. "I can't imagine ... you must have felt so alone." Then, with what sounded like morbid curiosity, he asked, "Did it _work_?"

Shannon snorted. "I've always liked girls. The boarding school didn't change anything."

"Oh." Brandon sounded vaguely disappointed.

He took a very deep, audible, breath, exhaled, then said in a very tiny voice, "...but I've always liked boys, too, Brandon. The school didn't change that. It just taught me to hide it better. Now you know."

"Fuck. Kenny was _right_. You _do _hide it rather well, you bastard. I'm impressed." Brandon exhaled sharply. "I just thought you were a bigoted asshole. Now I see you're a hypocritical asshole."

"Gee, thanks," Shannon sounded wounded. Kenshin figured this was at least partly because he'd just revealed one of his deepest secrets to a group of relative strangers, and had been called a hypocritical asshole.

What was he expecting? A group hug?

Brandon shook his head, suddenly, "I can't know what it was like for you, Shannon. But it's _for _people like you that I stick up for what's right. Maybe I'm a bit out there, sometimes, but damnit, if people don't stand up for what's right ..."

"Yeah." Shannon folded his arms and slumped farther down into the seat. "Brandon? If my father even knew I was having this conversation with you people, he'd probably make me leave this school and enroll in a new one. He's that scared about anyone knowing. I admitted I liked boys to him years ago, after he badgered me about it for days. That was when he enrolled me in the boarding school because, he said, he loved me and he wanted to help me. And he made me swear not to tell _anyone _about my ... well, he called it 'my flaw' ... when he let me come home after a year."

"Fuck." That was Sandy. "Can we beat your father up for you?"

"The thing is, my father does love me." Shannon raked his hands through his hair. "I don't know why I'm telling all of you this."

__

Because you don't have anyone you can unload on, Kenshin thought, but didn't say. _Your friends are probably all jocks and macho men who wouldn't understand if you talked about this to them._

"We'll keep your secret," Brandon said, softly.

"Thanks."

"Mmm." Brandon said. "I'm not cruel, Shannon. It would be _mean _to tell anyone about this."

Shannon repeated himself, with quite a bit more gratitude evident in his voice, "Thanks, Brandon."

"You can trust all of us, I think," Kenshin leaned back against the seat. He thought, cheerfully, _That was significantly easier than I thought it would be._


	9. Chapter 9

The trail to the creek was beaten smooth by many preceding feet; Kenshin was given to understand that this was a popular recreation spot for the college kids. There had been a number of cars in the parking lot at the trailhead.

Kenshin felt himself relax as he walked. He was enjoying the sunshine, and the freedom of a day without responsibilities -- he liked walking in the wilderness, too, and the duffle bag slung over his shoulder that contained his sword and their beach towels, a few incidentals, and their lunches was an insignificant weight.

Ahead of him, Shannon and Brandon were walking side by side and talking, with Sandy a good distance ahead of them. Brandon was swinging himself along easily; he was nimble enough on the well-traveled trail. The two were talking about something that involved lots of hand gestures on Shannon's part. Kenshin wondered if it was a serious subject or a casual one, then decided that perhaps it didn't matter: he was glad to see them simply _talking_.

He didn't know if anything would come of it, but Byron and Shinya had been inseparable almost from the day they met, over a century ago. They had been best friends, confidants, partners, and lovers for over fifty years, and had died within a few weeks of each other as old men who were together to the very end.

Kenshin still remembered the lost, aching look in Shinya's eyes after Byron had passed away. _Had I been able I think I, too, would have followed Kaoru the same way after she passed away._

It still hurt. Almost a century later, and it _still _hurt.

Ahead, Shannon said something that made Brandon bark a surprised laugh and then pause walking, lift one hand out of the cuff of his crutch, and flip Shannon off. Whatever Shannon's insult had been it apparently wasn't unforgivable; Brandon was also grinning.

__

Had I lived a normal lifespan, would I be some other person today, finding Kaoru again via fate or luck? Would be courting, innocent of our past, with no memory of who and what we were a century ago?

He glanced over at Carrie. She met his eyes, smiled, and said, "You planned that, with Shannon, didn't you?"

"Aa," he readily confessed. He was unashamed by his scheming.

"Meddling , manipulative old man." Her words were teasing and merry.

__

Old, she had said. And that was the crux of it. He truly wondered if his interest in Carrie was unnatural. He was _old _-- older than any mortal human man. He was over a hundred and sixty years; he wasn't sure of his exact date of birth, but he knew he'd been born in the 1840's. There were Immortals far older than he was -- witness the dizzying age of Methos -- but he'd already far exceeded a mortal lifespan.

__

I look young, but I'm ancient.

Without knowing what he was promising, he had told Kaoru, many times, that he would wait for her to be reborn and scour the globe to find her. Well, he _had _found her ... and yet, Carrie was not Kaoru. And yet, she was, too, in so many important ways. And the more time he spent in her presence, the more he knew that they _clicked_ together.

__

I spent decades of my life happily married to her, my lover and very dearest friend. She was my partner in everything. And Carrie ... Carrie has that same feel. I could spend a lifetime -- a very long _lifetime -- with her and never, ever grow tired of her company._

Ahead, Sandy had stopped on the lip of a cliff. Brandon handed his crutches to Shannon while leaning against a tree for balance; then his brother hitched him up onto his back and carried him piggy-back down the path.

Kenshin hurried to catch up. A narrow, rocky trail led down to rich green and blue waters that tumbled through a box canyon. The creek tumbled between boulders and over terraces, filling deep, clear pools. There were other young people already in the water -- shouts and laughter floated up. It looked like a popular party spot for high school and college kids.

Sandy was carrying Brandon without much difficulty. Brandon was a skinny kid, really, though his braces doubtless added extra weight and he had a relatively powerful upper body. Sandy was solid muscle, with overly large hands and feet and a certain gawky grace that promised more growing to do -- he was only barely eighteen and Kenshin suspected he would gain an inch or two more height. Kenji had been the same way -- he had put on one final growth spurt in his eighteenth year, ending up somewhere around six foot six.

Sandy, thankfully, would probably not be _that _tall, but he was definitely over six foot already. So was Brandon -- though he didn't look it because he was ordinarily bent over his crutches.

"Wow!" Carrie breathed. She ran ahead, flip-flops clicking as she hurried towards the water. She beat the boys to the first pool, and with reckless abandon, kicked her shoes off, dropped her towel, and jumped off the rocks into the crystal clear water. She surfaced with a shout, "C-cold!" and waved at them.

Sandy set Brandon down on a boulder overlooking the water, and then followed her in with a thunderous splash. Shannon dove after him.

Kenshin stopped out of sight of the others, in the shelter of a huge rock, and removed their towels, sandwiches, and a net bag of beers and sodas from the duffel bag. He was still taking a risk that someone could open the bag and find his sword, but it was a chance he would have to take. Like most Immortals, he had perfected the unpleasant art of lying about why he carried a sword with him and it wouldn't be the first time he'd had to spin a story about it. He certainly couldn't swim with it.

He left the duffel bag on the bank with the towels piled up nearby, hung the bag of drinks in the water to keep cool, then turned around just in time to see Brandon shove himself backwards off the rock, sans braces.

Brandon splashed into the water several feet below, to approving whoops from Sandy and Carrie. Kenshin assumed that Brandon's daredevil leap meant he could swim -- an assumption that proved true when Brandon silently swam _behind _his brother and efficiently dunked him without surfacing.

Brandon, it tuned out, swam like an otter. Kenshin grinned, watching the siblings engage in some very brotherly horseplay. Sandy had _no _hesitation about shoving Brandon under the water or splashing him until he spluttered helplessly. Then they turned on Carrie, half drowning her with waves of water. "Help!" she cried, though Kenshin was reasonably sure she could beat both of them without much effort.

"I'll save you!" Shannon shouted, coming to her rescue.

The result of Shannon joining the fray was some very loud shouting, splashing, mock heroism, and testosterone-laden posturing from all three young men. Carrie ended up swimming to shore next to him as play between Shannon and Brandon started to get rough.

"Think anyone's going to get hurt?" She asked, with some concern. The horseplay between them appeared to be getting out of hand.

Kenshin tucked his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around his leg, and said, with a smile, "Boys are different than girls, Carrie. Have you ever noticed that boys will beat on each other a bit and then consider the problem resolved?"

She nodded agreement. "Girls _never _forgive. A fight would just make things worse between two girls."

Brandon dunked Shannon hard and held him under for a moment. Shannon came up, swearing at him. "If you weren't handicapped, you fucking ass ..." Brandon shoved him under the water again. Shannon shot up from the water when Brandon let him up, and swung a punch at him. The blow connected with Brandon's jaw without any evident damage.

"Ah." Kenshin said, stopping Carrie from going to his rescue. "Let them sort it out. They're not trying to seriously hurt each other."

Sandy was watching his brother and Shannon with interest -- and also wasn't coming to his rescue. Brandon didn't appear to need it; he was _winning_.

"Shannon doesn't have a clue how to fight, that he doesn't," Kenshin observed, clinically.

"Kinda hard to throw an effective punch when you're both treading water," Carrie snickered.

Shannon got a good grip on Brandon's arm and started splashing him in the face until he choked and yelled, "Uncle! Uncle! Okay!"

"You hit me!"

"You dunked me!"

"Asswipe!"

"Bastard!"

"Get a room!" Carrie shouted at them.

Two heads turned her way.

Brandon started chuckling. So did, after a moment, Shannon, though much more hesitantly. Brandon splashed him one more time then swam for shore with strong strokes -- a life spent on crutches had given him tremendous upper body strength. His arms and pecs looked like the belonged to a body builder. Shannon pursued him, slower in the water, strokes a bit clumsy.

Somehow, between the middle of the swimming hole and the edge, some unspoken bit of communication passed between the four of them: Sandy, Shannon, Brandon, and Carrie. Kenshin was sitting with dignity beside the water when Shannon rose out of it with Sandy close on his heels.

Carrie giggled.

__

Oh hell, he thought, as Shannon and Sandy headed for him. Kenshin started to scramble to his feet, but Carrie caught his wrist with callused, strong fingers. "Oh, no you don't!"

He couldn't get free in time, at least, not without hurting her. He wasn't about to cause her pain just to spare his dignity.

"Get him!" Brandon whooped from the water's edge.

Shannon grabbed his arms, Sandy his feet. "Get his shoes!" Carrie suggested, "and his t-shirt!"

"Maa!" Kenshin protested. "Oro! Stop!"

They removed his sneakers and his t-shirt despite his protests. He had planned to swim anyway, but not this way ... The two boys swung him back and forth several times to gain momentum. Shannon said, "On three!"

"One! Two! Three!" Carrie counted off swings.

They released him. He went sailing through the air, uncontrolled, tumbling, with no way to chose where he would land, or how. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Kenshin hit the water with a splash. It was warmer than he expected -- not an icy mountain stream -- but still a cool shock. He went under, went down deep where the water was progressively colder and darker, then thrashed his way to the surface, and spit out a mouthful of creek water. The pool was even deeper than it looked; he would guess it to be thirty or more feet to the bottom. He had surfaced just in time to see Carrie diving back in the water after him.

For a bit, as he wrestled with his friends, it was as if he was young again -- in truth, he felt younger than he had ever been in his life, for even as a young man he had never played like this.

--------------

Carrie sat crosslegged on a flat rocky outcrop, eating her sandwich and drinking one of the beers. She was on her fourth can in a little over an hour -- it was enough to make her giggly and silly. Kaoru had been a happy drunk too, Kenshin recalled. She wasn't old enough to drink in California, but the drinking age here was nineteen -- and Kenshin saw no reason why she couldn't consume a few.

Below them, in the water, Shannon and Brandon were ... something. Trading insults? Bonding? About to go for another attempt at drowning each other? Kenshin wasn't sure. He wondered if they weren't talking about the extensive scars on his skin because they were glancing his way occasionally; they were too polite, perhaps, to ask now. The questions would come eventually. He wasn't sure what he would tell them.

Sandy was asleep on a sunny rock, a can of Pepsi balanced on his stomach. He had been mildly disgruntled when Kenshin had refused to allow him to drink any of the beer, but mollified by Kenshin's suggestion that he be the designated driver. At eighteen he wasn't legal, and Kenshin had no desire to get into trouble with the authorities for providing alcohol to him.

__

I would just as soon Carrie learn her limits with alcohol when I am around to watch over her, Kenshin thought. _She must learn how much she can drink before her reflexes and judgment are so impaired as to put her head at risk._

"You're turning pink," Carrie observed, with a smile. It was a rare sunny day, bordering on outright hot.

"Curse of being a red-head, that it is." He rose and retrieved the bottle of sunscreen from his duffle bag. A sunburn would be healed within hours, but the disappearance of the burn might cause comment. Sunscreen seemed called for.

He rubbed it on his arms and legs, then flipped his pony tail out of the way, turned around, and passed the bottle to Carrie without even really thinking about it. "Will you do my back?"

"Sure!" she said, a little too quickly.

Her fingers were nimble, but what he had expected to be a quick, clinical wipe-down with the lotion turned into something else. She worked her thumbs into the muscles of his back, finding old ridged scars under the skin. "Are all these scars from swords?"

"Aa. Mostly."

He should have pulled away. Had it been anyone else, he would have, but it was Carrie and he found himself simply relaxing under her touch. Besides, he didn't want to upset her by appearing to reject her. _Maa! What's she doing!_

"This one ..." her fingers traced a scar that he knew bisected other older scars, and which had needed countless stitches to close, "... must have nearly killed you."

"Mmm, yes. I don't know why that scarred so badly. Guilt, perhaps. Guilt is a powerful thing. I do suspect I was Immortal at the time I received it."

Her gentle touch felt good, and he trailed off to just enjoy the moment.

"Mm. This isn't from a sword, though," her hand rested on the deeply puckered scar on his left shoulder. He didn't have quite a full range of motion with that arm because of it. She started kneading the muscles.

"Carrie-dono, if you keep doing that, this one is going to fall asleep." _Or get aroused, and these swimming trunks would hide nothing, but she doesn't need to know that. _"And that scar is from a bite."

"What bit you?"

"Actually, the question is _who _bit me, and the answer is, Shishio Makoto, that it is."

"Father's sensei?" Carrie was shocked by that. Her hands stilled and he sensed her grow quiet behind him. He wondered what Soujiro had told her of him.

"Aa. He was a rather vile man, all told." Kenshin tucked one knee to his chest and wrapped his arms around his leg. "It is people like him who make me afraid for those I love."

Despite his comfortable acceptance of Carrie touching him he still froze when she wrapped her arms around him from behind and hugged him. It was simply unexpected; he rarely embraced anyone, and few people dared to initiate a hug with him. "I'm sorry, Kenshin. The more I hear about your life -- the more things I _see_, like the scars on your back -- your life must have been terribly hard. I'm so sorry you've had to live through such horrible things."

"Carrie-dono, you're drunk," he said, not unkindly, but he leaned back against her. It felt so good to be _held_, just for a moment. "And yes, there have been terrible times in my life, but also very good ones."

"You have the purest heart of anyone I know."

__

Sappy drunk, he remembered, with amusement. _Not just happy, but pitifully sentimental._

"Carrie-dono, there are times when I have cursed the fates that made me Immortal. But -- I have been married to three wonderful women. I have raised children, seen them grow and flourish in the world. There is great joy in seeing one's sons and daughters grow up and become adults. Too, I have had the opportunity to make a difference for many people ... I have loved, and been loved by, so very many friends. Carrie, all the sorrow and grief and pain, it's been worth it. It always will be."

Her grip on him tightened. He wondered if she was going to do something more intimate than just hugging him, and if so, how he would react. _Do I want to let her make the first move, if she's so inclined?_

Yes, his macho testosterone driven hind brain insisted. _Yes, let her. In this modern era, with both of us Immortals, there is no reason for us not to follow our hearts. Perhaps this was fated to be, that it was._

__

No, his saner self insisted. It was too soon. _She is not sober. And I do not do her justice if I think of her as the return of Kaoru. She is not Kaoru. _He extricated himself from her embrace by picking the bottle up and offering, "I'll do your back too."

She sat down in front of him. _Pretend she is one of your daughters, _he told himself, firmly, _or still a young girl._

Carrie had a nice combination of hard muscles and feminine curves. He struggled to remain platonic in his thoughts, then completely failed when he was finished, and she leaned back against him, nestling into his arms. She was definitely no child, and his feelings towards her were decidedly not paternal. _Gods, I'd love to kiss her._

She was taller than him, but at this angle, her head fit neatly under his chin. He wrapped his arms around her, and said quietly, "Carrie-dono, you've had a bit to drink, that you have. You wouldn't be doing this if you were sober."

"But I'd want to."

His swallowed hard, several times, hearing the truth in her words. He could smell coconut scented suntan lotion, and the vaguely green odor of creek water, and under it, the pleasant scent of _women_. Her damp hair tickled his shoulder and they were skin to skin with her bikini top covering not nearly enough. Any attempt at self control was rapidly going out the window. He shifted a little uncomfortably, swim trunks suddenly too constricting.

"Do you truly mean that?" He asked, in Japanese, because English was too difficult. His blood was elsewhere than his brain at the moment. She felt very good in his arms. She was young and wholesome and there willingly. Little tendrils of escaping hair tickled his nose and he sniffed, and smelled more coconut. He blew the hair away from his face with a puff of air.

She giggled as his breath whispered against her neck.

He doubted she had any idea the effect she was having on him. She was an innocent to the ways of men and women and love and romance and hormones. She was no Atsuko, who deliberately got him hot and bothered out of pure mischief. However, if he pushed Carrie away immediately, out of a desire not to let things go to far, she would be hurt. And, in truth, he didn't want to let go of her. "Carrie-dono," he said softly, "this is very pleasant, and I am _not _complaining about holding you because you are very beautiful and I am a man, but are you certain you won't be embarrassed by this later?"

"You think I'm beautiful?"

He nodded solemnly. "This one finds you stunning."

"I'm a tom-boy!" she protested.

"This one has always loved tom-boys." His heart was racing and pounding audibly in his ears. He couldn't quite believe they were having this discussion so soon. He was blushing and couldn't quite think what to say; speaking about his feelings had never been one of his strong points.

"You're really attracted to me?"

"I didn't expect to be." He bowed his head, nose close to her shoulder. He remembered she felt threatened by men; he cursed himself for saying anything about her looks. It would be very easy for her to take things entirely the wrong way and that could ruin their friendship, perhaps forever. The thought of her being frightened of him made his heart clench in his chest. "The last time I saw you, you were a little girl ... you are no little girl now, and I find my feelings towards you vastly different. I'm sorry, if it makes you uncomfortable. Know that I would never do _anything _to hurt you, Carrie-dono. I know ... I know you may not welcome that knowledge. I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have kept everything to myself."

She giggled again. He loved that giggle.

He lifted his head.

She said, "Silly Kenshin."

"I ... didn't expect this," he repeated, helplessly. "I'm honestly not sure how I should react to you. I'm all confused and I'll readily admit it, that I will."

"A hundred and sixty-some years old and you're _confused_? Gee, I feel less bad about not knowing what to do myself." She twisted and slid around a bit so that she was situated sideways to him and her cheek was resting against his shoulder. The wriggling around didn't help his state of acute interest much; he lifted one knee to his chest to put a leg between them so that she wouldn't bump into anything ... pointy ... that might scare her.

__

Down boy. Way too soon for that. Chastising that very masculine body part didn't help. It never did. _Down boy! _He thought, a bit desperately.

He stroked her hair, damp curls catching on the calluses on his hand. "What do you want, Carrie-dono?"

"I ... Kenshin, it just feels so _right _when I'm with you. I like just being in your presence. But I want more than just being your friend." She sounded scared when she said this, and he knew why. For her to admit attraction to a guy, and a desire for attention from that man, was terrifying to her.

"I am glad to hear you say that, because it mirrors what I also feel." Kenshin whispered past a lump in his throat. "But Carrie, I am not sure that this is a good idea between us."

"If we both feel the same," she traced a finger down his chest and gooseflesh sprang up on his arms despite the warm sun, "maybe it is."

"It's more complicated than that." He wondered if he should confess what he knew about her past. He didn't want it to come out as a shock, later. That could leave her wondering who he loved: Carrie or some ghost of his dead wife. On the other hand, that information could drive them forever apart if it sowed a seed of doubt in her heart about his intentions now. Perhaps, if he said nothing, she would never know.

__

Do I love her?

She snuggled into his arms, obviously very comfortable with the way he was holding her. He tightened his grip on her again, suddenly feeling all sorts of emotions, some of which he couldn't even name. He never wanted to let go ... he could have sat here for days, holding her, his chin resting on the top of her head, her cheek against his shoulder, one of her hands tracing small circles around a round, puckered scar just below his collarbone. Someone had shot him there; his mind was elsewhere, though, and he didn't even try to recall who.

"Carrie," he said quietly. "Carrie, look at me."

She looked up at him, blue eyes wide and innocent. "Yes, Kenshin?"

"I am very fond of you," he brushed a curl of dark hair away from her eyes. "Never doubt that I find you desirable, and beautiful, and ..." he trailed off, trying to find the words. He just wasn't _good _at this sort of thing, he thought. He preferred to let his actions speak for him. But Carrie, he sensed, needed to be _told _these things. Otherwise, she would never be sure if he was devoted to her because he loved her, or if he was acting out of a sense of obligation and oathsworn duty. "... and I want ..." he closed his eyes, briefly. "I want to see if the two of us ... if we could be more than just friends. I want to _try_."

"Oh."

"But Carrie ... I will do _nothing _that you do not want. Do you understand me?" He chuckled, low, and somewhat embarrassed. "Also, you should realize that I have a bit of cowardice in my heart when it comes to women. I'm terrified to lead the way, that I am. A relationship between us will work much better if you _tell _ me what you want, because I can guarantee that I'll hesitate and wait until it drives both of us to distraction if you don't."

She snickered. "_You_?"

"Oh, yes, me."

"You're shy!" she suddenly sat up, staring at him as if she'd never quite seen him in that light before.

"Et-to ... I suppose, yes, you could say that." He laughed, low, and pulled her back into his arms. "Come back here, Carrie-dono."

She relaxed back into his arms. After a moment she said in a nearly inaudible voice, "Would you ... would you like to kiss me?"

He _twitched_. He knew he should probably say no, but he didn't. Instead, he nodded wordlessly, and leaned over to press his lips to hers. He saw fear in her eyes, and he paused, and she bit her lip and said, "Please, Kenshin. I want this."

And then, with supremely bad timing, before he could actually summon the courage press his lips to hers, the buzz of another Immortal washed across his senses. Kenshin swore, softly, as he pulled back, then said, "Carrie, it's another Immortal. Most likely it's Chiyoko, but ..."

"Yeah, yeah. Damnit." She rose, letting him get after her. "Kenshin, can I have a rain check on that kiss?"

He smiled at her, eyes softening. "Certainly."

Then he picked up the duffle bag containing his sword. The presence of another Immortal was certainly a killjoy to the mood. He waited alertly for the other to appear.

It was, to his relief, Chiyoko. She scrambled down the trail to them, nimble on the rocks, wearing her motorcycle leathers -- and her expression told him something was wrong.

"Hey, Kenshin-papa," she said, in Japanese, "Somebody knifed your tire."

"_What_?" Kenshin stared at her in disbelief. _My truck! _He thought, shocked by the sense of violation. It was just a truck but, _It's _my _truck!_

Her lips were pressed into a thin line. "I haven't sensed any other Immortals around."

"Might not be Immortals," Carrie said. She glanced significantly at Brandon. "There's an awful lot of people here from the school."

Kenshin _growled_. "I have had quite enough of this, that I have."

------------------


	10. Chapter 10

The damaged tire was the right front, and it was, indeed, knifed. Kenshin frowned at the tire for a long moment, arms folded, eyes narrowed. Carrie thought that if looks could cause spontaneous combustion, the tire would have burst into flames.

Kenshin was mad. She had never seen him truly angry before. His patience had always seemed boundless. Finally, with a muttered oath in Japanese, he stalked to the car, opened the driver side door, popped the rear seat up, and extracted his jack and tire iron. Grumbling to himself he used the tire iron to crank the tire down from under the truck bed, then jacked the vehicle up.

"Put this in the bed, will you?" he asked Sandy, after unbolting the ruined tire.

Sandy silently carried the tire to the back of the truck and lifted it in. He was pale, eyes glittering with fury of his own.

"I'm sorry," Brandon said, standing behind Kenshin and watching him work on the tire, "this was probably about me. Sometimes the assholes take it out on my friends too."

"It's not your fault," Kenshin glanced at him as he finger-tightened the lug nuts on the spare.

"I'll pay for the tire ..."

"No!" Kenshin glared at him. "I can afford to replace the tire, it's not your responsibility, and you don't need to feel guilty for this."

"But ..."

"Brandon, shut up," Kenshin said. Carrie blinked. She seldom heard Kenshin speak so shortly to anyone. "This isn't your fault. The thing with your room was bad enough, but directly targeted at you. This is at me, simply because I dare to be your friend. That pisses me off in all sorts of new ways -- to start with, they're trying to isolate you, and that infuriates me. I think I'm going to have a few words with a few people. I suspect they'll leave you alone when I'm done."

"Umm, I don't want you getting hurt ..."

"Let me deal with this."

"Actually, that would be my job," Shannon pointed out. "If it's even the brats back at the dorm. And we don't know that it is."

Kenshin gave him a look, then pointed wordlessly at the driver side door. Scratched into the paint were the words, _die faggot!_

"Okay, still, not your job." Shannon folded his arms and scowled at the damage.

Kenshin swung around on him. "Shannon, unless you're planning on suddenly growing a backbone and sticking up for what's right, I would suggest you stay out of my way and let me handle this. I've had quite enough of this complete nonsense."

Shannon rocked back on his heels and stared at Kenshin. "But ..."

Kenshin picked the tire iron up off the ground and tightened the lug nuts with short, sharp, impatient motions. Then he quickly let the truck down off the jack, handed the jack and tire iron to Carrie, and walked around to the back of the truck where he shoved the tailgate shut. "Let's get out of here."

------------------

Sandy drove silently, fingers clutching the wheel. Kenshin glanced over at him, and forced himself to ask quietly and calmly, "When did you get your license?"

"L-last spring."

"Do you have a car of your own?" Kenshin had assumed Sandy knew how to drive, since he was seventeen and had a license and most American kids started driving at around sixteen.

"No. But I drove my mom's sometimes. When she let me."

_I didn't realize he was that green of a driver. _Sandy looked scared behind the wheel. He was driving exactly at the speed limit, and had been excessively hesitant in pulling out of the parking lot. Kenshin identified the traits of a hypercautious young driver, which was better than a reckless young driver, but had he known Sandy had so little experience he would have had Shannon drive.

Except Shannon had consumed at least a six-pack, and was in no shape for it. He wondered if Brandon could drive -- no, Kenshin didn't think he had the dexterity in his feet to manage the pedals. Sandy it was, behind the wheel. There was no way Brandon would fit in the front seat if they pulled the bench seat far enough forward for Kenshin to be able to manage the pedals safely.

_Maybe I can find a booster seat,_ Kenshin thought, with dry amusement.

Well, Sandy had to learn to drive someday. And he was doing well. Kenshin watched approvingly as the teen glanced over his shoulder to check for a car in his blind spot before changing lanes. He relaxed a little. "You're doing fine," he said, encouragingly.  
_  
Kenji was always a good driver, _Kenshin recalled. The Trevors had owned an assortment of cars starting in the 1920's. In fact, Kenshin's first car had been a hand-me-down from his son in the 1930's, when Kenji had replaced the Packard with a newer model.  
_  
Miss that old beast,_ Kenshin thought, with a bit of wistful fondness. It had gotten -- maybe -- five miles per gallon, on a good day, with a thunderously powerful straight eight engine that had stretched out longer than his arm under the hood. He had taken it home to Japan with him but World War II had spelled its doom; he had not been able to afford fuel for it anymore, or get parts to repair it.

Sandy tensed up further, however, when the winding mountain road that led to the creek started to descend a steep mountainside. The hillside fell sharply away on the driver's side into a rocky ravine. Sandy, fingers gone white, eyes fixed straight ahead, slowed down dramatically.

"You're doing good," Kenshin said, reassuringly.

"Sorry. I hate heights."

"You're fine." _Well, there's a difference between my Kenji and Sandy,_ Kenshin thought, with private amusement.

"You should, given the number of trees you fell out of," Brandon said.

"Like you didn't fall out of your share of trees!" Sandy shot back.

_How in the hell would Brandon climb a tree? _Kenshin wondered, then decided he didn't actually want to know. The father in him was already cringing. Kenji, climbing things, had been bad enough -- Kaoru had joked at times that Kenji could join an acrobat troop if he ever got tired of kendo.

"Only once!"

"Twice."

"The tree-house doesn't count!" Brandon huffed in indignation.

"Tree-house?" Shannon said, sounding curious.

"We built a tree-house," Sandy explained. Talking seemed to make him calmer; he relaxed as he drove. "But we didn't quite engineer it sturdy enough. It fell out of the tree with both of us in it. I still say we needed to use more rope."

"More rope wouldn't have made a difference," Brandon retorted. "It was the platform that came loose, not the beams we had strapped to the tree."

"But they slipped first and then the platform came loose."

The argument sounded like an old one. Kenshin smiled, listening to them. "How old were you two?"

"Thirteen," Brandon said, "Sandy was ten."

"Were you hurt?" Carrie asked, with morbid fascination.

"Broke my arm," Sandy glanced at her, very briefly, then stared nervously back at the road.

"Fourteen stitches on my knee," Brandon put in, grinning broadly. He displayed his hand for Kenshin to see; a fine white scar bisected the heel. "Nine in the palm of my hand. Chipped a tooth. Concussion. Though I think my mom was angriest about me trashing my braces in the fall. They're not cheap."

"Then," Sandy put in, "there was the time you tried to learn to ride my bike."

"It had training wheels on it!" Brandon glowered at his brother. "I thought I could. I was eight."

"The problem was," Sandy said, with a grin, "he can't really peddle very well. So he was learning by pushing the bike to the top of this hill by our house and coasting down."

"Lots of fun," Brandon agreed.

"That was, until the brakes on the bike got stuck," Sandy said, shaking his head at the memory. "He must've been doing thirty, forty miles an hour when he ran into the side of a parked car at the bottom of the hill. He was passing cars going down the road. When he hit that sedan, he dented the door. Mom was furious when she got the bill."

"I wasn't hurt," Brandon said, shaking his head. "Well, except for some cuts and bruises. You know, the usual."

"Then there was the time he fell off the roof," Sandy recalled.

"Yeah, because I was getting your kite down! You decided you hated heights after the tree-house thing and you were crying about the kite!"

"Boys," Carrie said, with a snicker.

"Woah!" Sandy suddenly exclaimed, as another car came up on the left, apparently passing them.

"Easy," Kenshin said, "He's just going by ..."

The car swung towards Sandy. Sandy swore and swerved away from it, coming perilously close to the edge of the road.

"Hold your ground!" Kenshin said, alarmed, as the other car -- a big SUV of some sort -- crowded them.

"Fuck!" Sandy flinched from the other vehicle.

"Who the fuck ... that's Michael driving!" Brandon exclaimed, peering past Kenshin and Sandy. "Son of a bitch!"

"Hold your ground! Hold your ground!" Kenshin ordered, "Don't let him push you onto the shoulder ..."

Michael was playing chicken with them, Kenshin realized. Unfortunately, Sandy didn't have the experience to not react to the other driver's aggression. When Michael swung again into his lane Sandy swerved away. The truck's right side tires caught the soft shoulder with an alarming rattle of gravel and heavy vibration.

"SHIT!" Sandy spun the wheel, overcorrected, and lurched into the SUV's passenger side door. There was a terrible grinding of metal on metal. Sandy reacted by swerving hard away from the other vehicle ... right towards the ravine on the passenger side.

"Sandy, no!" Kenshin lunged for the wheel, but too late. Everything had happened in a split second, though it had felt longer.

The truck's right front wheel went over the edge. With a sickening lurch it flipped over. There were screams. Glass shattered. Something hit Kenshin in the head, hard enough that his vision went black. He was aware of spinning and crunching and multiple impacts from various angles.

The truck finally crunched against a tree on the driver's side, behind the driver's door. It bounced off the tree and skidded to halt with one dizzying last 180 degree spin. Kenshin sat there for a moment, stunned. Only when Sandy said, very distinctly, "Shit," did he start moving.

"Everyone okay?"

"Fucking stupid question," Shannon said, from behind him.

"Carrie? Brandon? Talk to me," Kenshin unbuckled his seat belt. He wasn't hurt, though he figured he'd be sore in the morning, Immortal or not.

"Owe," Brandon said.

"What hurts?" Kenshin demanded.

"Everything. I wrenched my back."

Brandon sounded coherent. Kenshin was more worried about Carrie, who hadn't said a word.

"Carrie?" Kenshin rose up onto his knees on the seat and peered back at her.

"She's fucked up," Shannon said, sounding vaguely detached. Kenshin knew that feeling; he'd experienced it before. Shannon would probably have a screaming breakdown later. Kenshin was, in truth, in close to the same mood because 'fucked up' was a good description of Carrie.

A tree had stopped the truck. It had also shoved the door in a couple of feet. Carrie's leg was obviously broken, in a shards of femur visible flavor of 'shattered.' Blood poured from a severed artery, pulsing in time with each beat of her heart.

She also had broken ribs, to judge by the red bubbles and froth around her nose and mouth and her very rapid breathing. So much blood, Kenshin realized. Too much blood.  
_  
I hate the smell of blood._

He realized he was hyperventilating, and forced himself to calm down. _Carrie is going to die,_ he realized. Like it or not, she will Immortal in moments.

He asked Sandy, without taking his eyes from Carrie, "Are you hurt?"

Sandy said, "My arm hurts ... What's wrong with Carrie?"

"We've got to get an ambulance for her!" Shannon screamed. There was the panic Kenshin had been expecting. "She's bleeding! Oh, god, she's bleeding!"

"She is very badly hurt," Kenshin said, thinking hard. "Sandy, will your door open?"

Sandy had to shove it with both feet, but it opened. Most of the damage had been to Carrie's door. Sandy scrambled out, and Kenshin managed to get the rear door open by prying it with the tire iron -- that had been what had conked him in the head; it had ended up in the front seat. But by the time he got to her, she was no longer breathing.

"Fuck! We have to do CPR!" Shannon waved his arms in the air. His expression was very wild.

Brandon, eyes somehow ancient and knowing, took in the blood on the back seat, the blood on Carrie, and her injuries, and said, "We can try, but her chest is trashed."

"She's dead," Kenshin said, very quietly. He knew death with intimate acquaintance, and CPR was going to do absolutely nothing for someone whose chest felt like an armload of broken twigs when he scooped her up.

She was heavy, but he was running on adrenaline. He staggered with her to a level spot of ground. There, he set her down, then pulled her head and shoulders into his lap, wrapped his arms around her, and said, "Shannon, go check on Brandon, will you? I think he's okay, but he may have gotten hit by that tire iron too."

"She can't be dead!" Shannon wailed.

Brandon, balancing himself on the twisted wreckage of the truck, with only one crutch in his hand, appeared. Kenshin hadn't even noticed him getting out of the truck. He said, "Oh, man, Kenshin, I'm sorry."

Kenshin looked over the three of them. Brandon didn't look hurt at all except for a few scrapes and bruises. Shannon had a bloody cut over one eye and a deep gash on his arm, but again, was not in bad shape. Sandy was holding his arm like it hurt; Kenshin was afraid it was broken and he was only now beginning to really feel it. But none of them appeared mortally wounded.

"My fault ..." Sandy moaned.

"My friends," Kenshin said quietly, "You're going to see something that defies explanation by science in just a moment. May I ask that you keep this quiet?"

This request simply earned him confused looks from two of them. Sandy sank to his knees and started crying. "I'm never going to drive again. Damnit! Damnit! Can't we do something?"

Shannon appeared to be a lot calmer than Sandy now. Kenshin caught his eyes. "Will you grab her foot and pull it out straight?" Kenshin wasn't sure how the rules worked for broken bones. Would a leg that deformed heal straight? He did not want to take a chance.

"Umm ..."

"Please," Kenshin said. He improvised, "I can't bear looking at it."

Shannon bit his lip, then grabbed Carrie's leg by the ankle and pulled until the femur was more or less straight. Then he slumped down on the ground next to Kenshin. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Kenshin bowed his head over Carrie, and brushed his knuckles against her cheek. He wondered how long it would take her to return to life. If she woke before the authorities arrived he might yet salvage this mess.

Brandon lowered himself heavily to the ground next to his brother. He wrapped both arms around Sandy's shoulders. Sandy burst into tears and buried his face in his brother's shoulder; the two of them sat there -- both of them were crying. Kenshin glanced at them, wanting to offer them comfort, but not entirely sure what to say. Carrie's Immortality would be much better witnessed then seen. His words would sound foolish and crazy until they witnessed her revive.

No other cars appeared to be stopping. He glanced up at the road, and realized they'd traveled far enough from the pavement that the truck couldn't even be seen.

Under his hands, there was a flicker of movement. Her ribs were starting to knit together. He wondered again if that horribly shattered femur would have reformed perfectly straight on its own. The fracture was compound, and he could still see bone through a deep gash in her leg ... but sudden the leg moved, and light flared, and that wound disappeared as flesh flowed back together. There was no scar.

Shannon had seen. He looked up at Kenshin and mouthed, "What?" then, said louder, "What?!"

Kenshin hugged Carrie harder, smoothing blood-matted hair away from her face. Shannon demanded, "What are you doing?"

His words made Sandy and Brandon both look up in time to see the deformed lines of her chest smooth out of their own motion as ribs healed back together. _I suppose I didn't need to gross Shannon out, _Kenshin thought, with grim amusement. He'd never watched another Immortal heal like this before.

Sandy's eyes flickered down to her leg and he noted the wound was gone. "What in the hell ...?"

"Nothing from hell," Kenshin said, quietly. "What you are seeing -- I cannot explain it, though I was expecting it. Carrie is Immortal."

She took a deep, ragged breath and twitched hard.

"Immortal?" Shannon said, "What the fuck?"

"Immortals ... we cannot die, unless we lose our heads." Kenshin explained, briefly. "Otherwise, we will live forever. It's magic, perhaps, though the source of it is not known even to the oldest of us -- and I have known Immortals aged thousands of years. At the heart of it, however, we are no more nor less human than you three."

Carrie gasped again, then groaned, and put a hand to her head. He felt the flare of another Immortal's powerful ki at the same time. He stroked her hair and said, "Carrie-dono? How are you feeling?"

"Head hurts," she said, thickly. "God, my head hurts."

Sandy said, alarmed and incredulous, "Carrie! Hold still, you shouldn't move ..."

"She's fine." Kenshin was surprised at how quickly she had healed. It had always taken him much longer. _Then again, I was generally resisting the process because I liked seeing my loved ones in the afterlife before reality yanked me back. And I've always denied what I am, hated it, fought it on some level.  
_  
Carrie said, thickly, "Was anyone else hurt?"

"Sandy's shoulder is broken, I think," Brandon said.

Kenshin glanced at the brothers. That explained why Sandy was holding his arm so close to his chest and why it looked wrong. Sandy was now tight-lipped with pain, eyes narrowed, complexion far too pale. Now that he looked at it closely, Kenshin suspected dislocated rather than, or in addition to, broken. _Hard to tell without modern x-rays,_ though. He needed to get the kid to a hospital.

His truck wasn't going anywhere, ever again; they would need to involve others. And the law dictated that he call the cops. Besides, Sandy could be hurt worse than he looked -- he wanted to get him to the hospital quickly, which meant a 911 call. Conscious of the need to make things look good for the authorities, he said, "Shannon, when the police ask, tell them you were seated where Carrie was. Can everyone remember that?"

Shannon blinked, then glanced at his gashed arm -- blood was trickling between his fingers -- and nodded. That would explain the blood on the seat in the truck, Kenshin hoped. He know from vast personal experience just how much even a small amount of blood would cover. Hopefully the police wouldn't look too closely at the volume.

Given the state of that door, Shannon's survival with only minor injuries would be seen as a small miracle, but Kenshin knew that paramedics were used to seeing people walk away from horrendous crashes and be killed in minor ones. Sometimes it was just luck.

"C'mon, Carrie, there's water in the bottom of this ravine. We need to wash the blood off you," Kenshin said, urging her to stand up. The others stared in absolute shock as she rose carefully.

He caught her hand in his and led her towards the creek he could hear trickling below. "I died, didn't I?"

"Aa, you did," he said, gently.

"I can ... I can feel you. In my head."

"You always will be able to, now." He shrugged out of his shirt, soaked it in the water, and handed it to her. "I'm sorry, Carrie. If I had done things differently this might not have happened this way."

"Not your fault." She wiped at the blood.

"Did anyone call 911?"

"No, and I wanted to make sure things were okay for the authorities before I suggested it." Kenshin said. "I think they're all in shock."

"Your sword?"

"In the duffle bag under the back seat," Kenshin said. "Yeah, I need to get it. Are you feeling a little better?"

She nodded, "I feel ... I don't hurt. Just dizzy."

"That's just the blood loss. You'll feel better after a good meal and a little bit of time." He rested a hand on her arm. "I'm sorry, Carrie. I feel like I failed you."

She hugged him, a quick squeeze. "It had to happen sooner or later, Kenshin. And it's Michael's fault. I swear I'm going to beat the shit out of that man when I get my hands on him. He's got it coming."  
_  
You'll have to wait in line,_ Kenshin thought, angrily. 

----------------------


	11. Chapter 11

The motorcycle was a tiny little import -- all engine and wheels. Michael glanced at it in his rear view mirror, then looked again when he realized that the rider was child-sized. Was he -- no, she -- tailing him? He had seen the bike several times in traffic and figured it was another student returning from the creek.

There was a stoplight ahead -- it was out in the middle of nowhere, and there wasn't another car in sight. He thought about running it, then decided it was just nerves. _I didn't intend for that to happen with the truck. We'll tell the cops _they _ran into _me _when we get into town!_

He glanced at his friends, who were tight-lipped and silent. _Damn him. That asshole Brandon got me kicked out of my _own room. _Who the hell does he think he is? Arrogant son-of-a-bitch. He's buddy-buddy with the RA, even. I saw them together!_

He knew, now, why he had gotten kicked out of his room: the RA was likely _sleeping _with the little faery. He hadn't had a chance in the world of getting fair treatment.

The motorcycle pulled up along side him. He glanced over ... in time to see a glitter of steel. His passenger side window exploded in a spray of glass.

"FUCK!" He recoiled.

The tiny rider vaulted onto the hood of his Tahoe, an easy one-handed leap. He stared in utter shock as she pulled a _sword_ back and thrust it through the windshield. The glass splintered into a thousand tiny shards. The blade pierced the seat an inch from his neck. The girl snarled from under her helmet, "If any of you _ever _touch _any _of my friends again I will _have your head on a pike_. Do you understand me?"

She sounded like a little girl. This did not make her any less terrifying. He nodded mutely. One of his friends moaned in fear. Somebody else gibbered, "Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!"

"Excellent." She tilted her head, leaned over, reached through the window, grabbed the hilt of the sword, and retrieved it. Then she spun it around in her hand a few times, and sniffed delicately but audibly from under the helmet and added, "Oh, that's going to be a pain in the ass to get out of your upholstery. Might I suggest Nature's Miracle? It works on cat pee; should work on human piss too."

He choked, only now aware of a warm wetness staining the front of his trousers.

The girl hopped off his hood, started to walk away, then turned around and made a flat, sharp thrust through the Tahoe's grill. Radiator fluid fountained out of the cut.

Without any further word she walked to her bike, then zoomed off.

-------------------

It had been a good thirty years since the last time Kenshin had been in the back seat of a police car. He was relieved this time to be taking a ride with a friendly officer who was _not _arresting him. The cop was simply giving them a ride to the station to provide statements.

The officer was young, Kenshin thought -- perhaps he was in his mid twenties, but no more. The young man said, "I can't believe all of you walked away from that crash. That was unreal."

"We were very lucky, that we were," Kenshin agreed. The kid reminded him of someone, however, he was certain that it wasn't Saito, or any other officer he had known in his life. _Meh! I am looking for reincarnations in every face I see now. _ He glanced over at Carrie, who was too quiet. He was certain she was still processing what had happened.

"Are you certain you don't want to go to the emergency room?" The officer asked. "At least to get checked out?"

"We're sure," Carrie said, her voice a little shaky. Then, suddenly, she straightened up and pointed. "Hey! There's Michael's SUV!"

"Ah," Kenshin said, regarding the Tahoe out the window as we passed, "Officer Green, I do believe that is Michael and his friends right there. Something seems to have happened to their vehicle."

The windshield and driver's side windows were smashed, and there was a puddle of orange coolant collecting underneath the car. As soon as the cop stopped Michael headed for the police cruiser. He looked boiling mad, and he started to shout, "Some bitch attacked my car with a sword ..."

Then he saw Kenshin and Carrie, watching him through the back window, and he stopped short. And stared.

"_Kuso_!" Kenshin swore, pissed beyond belief at Chiyoko, though he couldn't help but feel a bit of snarky amusement. The '_bitch with a sword' _was almost certainly her.

"Think she saw what happened?" Carrie asked, in Japanese.

"I wondered where she had gotten to," Kenshin said, amusement bubbling up despite his disapproval of her methods. Chiyoko had been following them until the accident.

Well, Michael had been asking for it. He added, "She probably figured we could handle the wreck and that chasing down Michael was important. Also, I'm betting her identification won't hold up to close scrutiny because she doesn't have the resources I do to build an identity. She probably wants to avoid contact with the cops as much as possible."

"I do believe he either spilled something in his lap or peed his pants." Carrie's eyes flickered downward at the tell-tale wet stain on Michael's trousers.

Kenshin said, in disgust, "Urine."

They watched through the window as the officer called for backup and then grilled Michael for a moment. His friends attempted to come to his defense and the offer shut them down with a few short, commanding words. Intimidated, the young men sat down on the side of the road where Officer Green pointed.

Michael was still loud enough to be easily heard; the officer had opened the cruiser's front windows a crack. "He swerved into me when he tried to pass!" Michael insisted, doggedly stubborn. "He was mad about his brother!"

"Why would he be mad about his brother?" The cop asked, in a reasonable tone.

Michael's response was belligerent. "The twink thinks I put shaving cream all over his stuff. I didn't! I have an alibi! But he got me kicked out of MY ROOM at the dorm! And then he picked a fight with me yesterday! And then today his brother swerved into my Tahoe! It's practically brand new! Look at the passenger side, it's ruined! And then one of his friends attacks my car with a sword!"

Kenshin sighed.

The cop held his finger up in front of Michael's face. "Follow my finger with your eyes ..."

"Think he's drunk?" Carrie asked.

"Betting on it." Kenshin replied, arms folded and head bowed. "I wish Chiyoko had stuck around as a witness, though, rather than being a vigilante. That's something to remember, Carrie -- we are never above the law. If she is identified as his assailant she could face charges. This is an issue that could have been handled wholly by the legal authorities."

After several minutes another squad car pulled up. The second officer escorted Michael to his car, where he was made to blow into a portable breathalyzer. After a minute longer, the officer put Michael into the back of the car, then walked over to Officer Green's cruiser. He said, shortly, "Idiot kid. He just blew a .24."

Green was running the boy's license through the computer attached to the dash of his cruiser. After a moment he said, "Not his first, either."

"Sandy was sober," Kenshin said, carefully. "I made sure of it. He's too young to drink! And I didn't drink anything either; I'll be happy to take a test. Michael deliberately swerved into us."

"As drunk as he is," Green said, frowning, "it may not have been deliberate. And he claims that Sandy hit _him_."

"Only after he forced Sandy over onto the shoulder. Officer, Sandy's a good kid, and he was doing a very good job driving, but he's a new driver and he overcorrected. None of that would have happened if Michael had not crowded him." Kenshin kept his tone reasonable and calm.

Green ran a hand over his face. "Be that as it may, Kenny, I don't think we can arrest him for anything like attempted murder. The charges wouldn't stick. DUI, yes; he's going to jail tonight for that. He has two priors so he'll likely lose his license and he might do some jail time. -- Now, do you know anything about the woman he says attacked him?"

"Oro?" Kenshin said, putting on his best innocent rurouni smile.

"Perhaps some vigilante saw what happened," Carrie suggested. "He's certainly had it coming."

--------------------

It was several hours later by the time that they'd given statements to the cops and then caught a cab back to their dorm. Kenshin saw Carrie to her room, then returned to his where he called Brandon's cell phone.

Brandon answered it on the second ring. "Hey, Kenny. I'd ask you how you were feeling, but I understand that is somewhat of a pointless question."

Kenshin and Carrie had managed to give the three boys a short version of Immortality 101 in the twenty minutes before the paramedics had arrived. Kenshin had punctuated the explanation by slashing his palm and letting them watch it heal. He wasn't sure what they thought, but all three had promised to keep their secret.

__

Good boys, all three of them, Kenshin thought.

Shannon had also pointed out, "Who the hell would _believe _us?"

"Other Immortals, and those who sometimes hunt Immortals," Carrie said, quietly, shoulders hunched. "We're not invulnerable. Some very good people have lost their lives over the years because they were betrayed. You could hurt us badly, if you choose."

"Carrie," Brandon had said, with heartfelt feeling, "why the fuck would we want to _hurt _you?"

That conversation had been hours before. Now, Brandon sounded a bit more suspicious. Kenshin figured he had thought about the matter and had questions they would need to answer. Well, he would, and as clearly and honestly as he could. In response to Brandon's statement Kenshin sighed, "My heart hurts, Brandon. I am sorry everyone got hurt and I am sorry that Carrie is Immortal now. Her life has become far more complicated. I'll tell you more later; you need to know _why _it is so critical that this secret be kept, both for her safety and for yours."

"Not yours?"

Kenshin said tiredly, "There are few who would challenge me. Mostly young idiots and reckless fools. But Carrie is young and they will think she is defenseless even if she is far from that ..." he trailed off. "At any rate, Brandon, I will tell you all you wish to know. But for now, how are you guys doing?"

"My brother has a dislocated shoulder, and two broken ribs. Shannon was getting his head stitched up, last I heard. He's also got a concussion and a broken finger."

"And you?" Kenshin prompted, gently.

"Well, I can't seem to move my legs below the knee," Brandon's tone turned snarky, "But I'll survive. I'll be back in a bit -- I'm waiting on a cab."

Kenshin snorted in amusement. This world's Brandon was a good bit more willing to mention his disabilities than the Byron he had known generations ago. Being disabled had been treated as a moral failing by the Victorians, where, in this time, it was much more acceptable. "You'll be a lot stiffer in the morning, I warrant. Well. Michael got arrested for DUI; Chiyoko caught up to him and immobilized his car and we saw him when we drove past in the police cruiser."

"Asshole should be arrested for five counts of attempted murder," Brandon growled, angrily.

"It became a matter of who was telling the truth. Michael and his buddies all claimed that Sandy swerved into _his _car, which is true, but only because Michael forced him onto the shoulder. For what it's worth, I don't think they intended for us to wreck, they just intended to harass us."

"Feh. Doesn't matter what they intended. Your truck's totaled and if Carrie wasn't ... Immortal ... she'd be dead." Brandon's voice caught. He said, candidly, "I like Carrie, Kenny. I don't want anything bad to happen to her. You can trust me to keep the secret."

Kenshin yawned sleepily. "Are you going to be okay getting home on your own?"

"You know, knowing that you're over one hundred and fricking sixty years old and that you apparently have a hero complex that makes Superman look like a coward makes that question _slightly _less insulting. Yes, Kenshin, I'm a big boy. I can get home on my own."

"Gomen nasai," Kenshin mumbled, slipping into Japanese out of exhaustion. He corrected himself, "I'm very sorry, Brandon. I know you can. I'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah, yeah," Brandon sounded slightly mollified. "See you tomorrow, _Pops_."

----------------

Kenshin's phone buzzed at a little after six AM, when he had less than three hours sleep. Without even lifting his head from the pillow he reached out, snagged it off the windowsill by the head of his bed, and flipped it open. "Moshi-moshi."

"Ahh ... Ken?"

"Err, Hello, Richie." He lifted his head from the pillow, focused bleary eyes on his alarm clock, then shut them again. It felt like he had eyeballs full of sand. "It's early."

"You're usually up by five, I thought. What, you were out partying last night?"

"Nnngggg." Kenshin, eyes still shut, sat up. "My truck got totaled. Everybody got hurt."

"Oh, man, I'm sorry!"

"They will be okay. Sandy dislocated his shoulder and broke some ribs. He was driving. Carrie ..." he trailed off. He could feel her buzz from four rooms away. "Carrie's Immortal now."

"Fuck, man. She's too young!" Richie was speaking from experience, Kenshin knew. He agreed, having similar problems with his appearance.

"Could be worse. Coulda happened seven years ago when she got shot. She'll be able to pass for much older, easily, with her build and height." Kenshin tucked one knee to his chest. "I'm going to fly out to San Francisco this weekend to pick up her sword from her father. She has one I gave her when she was a kid."

"Why not just FedEx it?" Richie asked.

"I don't want to risk it being lost. It's a sakabatou, from the same maker as mine. It was given to me by that man, over a century ago." He glanced at his sword, leaning against the wall. He'd paid a frightening sum of money for another sakabatou by Iori, grandson of the man who had made his original blades. It had turned out that Iori had made several reversed blade katanas, though tracking one down and then convincing the owner to sell it had not been easy. His, at least, was not quite as gaudy as the one he had given Carrie.

"Ah." Richie said.

Also, Kenshin wanted to have a heart to heart talk with Carrie's parents, and it was a discussion he figured was best done face to face and not over the telephone. _Though if Soujiro decides he wants my head, maybe a telephone would be best!_

Richie sighed, suddenly, "Kenshin, I am calling about Morgan. She was gone this morning when I got up."

Kenshin swore, a quick hiss of angry syllables. Then he said, "Apologies, Richie. It's been a very trying time the last few days and I did _not _need this on top of everything else. Do you have any idea where she may have gone?"

"Not a clue. Really, I'm surprised it took her this long to bolt. She's been thinking about it; I could tell. I'm sorry, I couldn't watch her every second of the day."

Kenshin glanced at his alarm clock. He had class in two hours. His patience for a _stupid _teenage girl was incredibly low at the moment, and he just didn't have time for her. "You know, Richie, I arranged for her to have a safe haven where she would be comfortable and well protected. And then she runs away for no good reason. I think I'm going to take my time looking for her. At a certain point, they have to help themselves before I can help them."

Richie snorted. "True. I tell you what -- I'll put the word that we're looking for her and we can canvass the streets -- what, tomorrow?"

"Aa, that sounds good. After my classes. Likely she'll get a room somewhere tonight and it will be easier to find her after she does that, anyway." Kenshin heaved a disgusted sigh. "I am sorry for the trouble she is causing you, Richie."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm as much of a sucker for girls in trouble as you are, Ken. Though generally they _want _my help, they don't run from me."

"She is very young and very scared," Kenshin said, quietly. "She doesn't trust anyone but herself. At least, that is what I think."

-----------------

Carrie knocked on his door thirty minutes later, as he was stepping out of the shower. "Just a moment, Carrie-dono!" he called, easily identifying her by the buzz from the other side of the door and the height of the knock.

Quickly, he yanked on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then let her in while he was tying his hair back. She looked as tired as he felt. "G'morning, Kenshin," she said, hugging him briefly. "Sandy called me. They're releasing him this afternoon. I'm going to go by his teachers and get his assignments for the first day."

Kenshin, unfortunately, had class of his own, and couldn't escort her around. Still, he judged other Immortals were highly unlikely to cause trouble on a busy college campus during the day. "_Be careful_," he said, resting a hand on his arm and looking up at her. "You're a target now for a whole bunch of Immortals who never would have taken your head before your first death. There's an unspoken code among us that only the worst will violate; normally, you're safe until you die that first time. If you run into trouble I want you to head for the biggest crowd of people you can find."

"I _know_, Kenshin," she said. "I called Mac, by the way. He's loaning me an iaito until we can get my sword. I, uh, I agree with you, by the way -- he wanted to loan me a katana, but I said no. About not taking heads. I don't _ever _want to do that."

He nodded gravely. He had expected nothing less from her. "Sometimes it is necessary, Carrie-dono, but I would prefer if you never had to kill either. Though for today ..." he walked over to his sword, and picked it up, and handed it to her. "I want you to carry this for today. We'll meet Mac to pick the iaito up tonight."

"Your sword ... but ..."

He smiled grimly, an expression without much humor. "There are few Immortals who will cross swords with me, Carrie-dono, and they will assume I am armed because I am _always _armed with my sword. You, however, are a young Immortal, unknown and untested. There will be those who seek to take your head because they think you will be an easy kill."

"But ..."

He opened the room's closet and pulled his duster out, and then retrieved a sword harness from his dresser drawer. It fit her; it was, actually, a bit too large for him. He had bought it from an Immortal tailor with Carrie in mind, knowing that she might need it -- nobody knew why, but _most _Immortals died young and unexpectedly. The coat was long enough to hide the sword in a specially designed pocket in the lining, and he demonstrated how the snaps worked.

"Watch sitting down," Kenshin said, "if you're not careful, the line of the sword will show. It takes a little practice. _Be careful_, you don't want to get caught wearing it by a mortal. You also don't want to get caught without it."

"Thank you, Kenshin," she hugged him.

He returned the embrace, squeezing tight. She felt so very good to hold. Softly, he said, "It would destroy me if anything happened to you, Carrie. _Be careful_."

"Kenshin," she said, seriously, as she released him, "Did you mean what you said yesterday? About seeing if we could be more than just friends?"

"Aa. I meant it." He didn't know what else to say, and she didn't offer any comment, so he walked to the window. Outside, he could see students starting to stir, mostly heading to the cafeteria. Reminded of food, his stomach growled. He poured a couple of cups of water and a scoop of rice into the rice cooker and set it to steaming, then bent over, retrieved a styrofoam tray of salmon from the little fridge, and poured a bit of oil and some soy sauce and a few pinches of seasonings into his electric skillet. He didn't start the skillet just yet; the fish would cook far faster than the rice. "Will you join me for breakfast?"

"You are _so _Japanese, sometimes," she teased him. "However, that looks better than what they serve in the cafeteria, anyway. Thank you."

He glanced at her. She smiled. He said, "Carrie, I am very attracted to you, in a way I haven't been to any woman since Atsuko died. But things may be complicated between us."

She mimed holding a telephone to her ear. "Hi Mom! You know your uncle? I'm dating him!"

"Heh." Kenshin said, sourly. "Yes, that. Among other things."

"Other things?" She tilted her head. "Well, there's the whole fact that you're over a hundred and forty years older than I am. But, you know, I have observed that our relative maturity levels are about the same. You act like you're _twelve _sometimes."

He stuck his tongue out at her. Then he sobered. "Carrie-dono, the age difference _does _worry me. I am a grown man. I may not look it, and I do not always need to act it, but I _am_. I am very afraid of asking things of you that you are in no way ready for. But on the other hand, I am afraid that I may upset you if I try to wait, and you are, in truth, ready. I am not very good at matters of the heart."

She sat down on his bed, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She studied him for a moment. In a small, scared voice, she said, "Like sex?"

He knew he was turning bright scarlet. "Oro! Carrie-dono, not just that, though yes -- I'm not sure you realize what you _do _to me. However, I am more referring to commitment. I am ..." he trailed off and eyed her for a moment. How to put into words the truth at the core of heart when it came to those he gave his love to? "I am loyal, Carrie. If we become serious, I will expect the same sort of faithfulness from you that I will give. But you are _young_, Carrie-dono. Perhaps it would be best for both of us if you dated other men. Do you really want to commit to me forever and always without knowing who your options are? If you later changed your mind you would come to resent me, or perhaps damage both our hearts in leaving me. I do not wish that. For either of us."

"Who, somebody like Sandy?" she asked, innocently.

Kenshin's eyes crossed and he nearly bit his tongue. Very carefully he asked, "Are you ... interested ... in Sandy?"

She snorted a most unladylike sound. "He's like the little brother I never had. I can't see _that _happening."

__

Thank the Gods. I'm not sure my sense of humor could survive that development intact.

"Danny, now ..."

Kenshin said, in Japanese, flustered, "Et-to ... nani?!"

She cracked up, shaking with laughter, arms around her ribs, giggling helplessly. "Then there's Shannon! Hey, we could be a threesome!"

He summoned his dignity and said, with his arms folded and no small amount of annoyance showing in narrowed eyes, "That is _not _happening. This bishounen likes girls, thank you very _much_, Carrie-dono, and is not into sharing."

She burst out laughing and kept giggling until she cried and had to wipe tears from her watering eyes. He would have found her reaction a lot more amusing if he wasn't reasonably sure she was laughing _at _him rather than _with _him. Slightly offended, he snapped on the electric skillet and showed her his back. She found this subject funny? He was being serious!

"Ah, Kenshin," she said, wheezing a bit. "Sorry. Your reaction, though! You're jealous."

__

Not exactly, Kenshin thought, but didn't say. "Oro, _me_?"

"Oro, _you_," she mimicked.

He huffed a sigh. "Carrie, I just don't want you to feel like you made a hasty decision with me."

Carrie tilted her head sideways. "How old was Kaoru when you married her again?"

"Eighteen," he admitted, "but ..."

"Did she ever regret marrying you?"

"Sometimes."

Carrie digested that for a moment. He let her sit in silence while he dropped the fish into the skillet. It sizzled loudly and he clapped a lid over it. Out of respect for the other residents in the dorm, who he suspected were less likely to consider fish an appetizing breakfast, he also opened the window. The morning breeze smelled of freshly cut grass and he could hear a lawnmower somewhere nearby.

When he finally turned back to Carrie she said, in what he thought was a very peculiar tone of voice, "Kenshin, what do you think she regretted?"

"Many things." He bowed his head. "Because of me, because of what I am, Sanosuke Sagara died, and she loved him like a brother. I did too. Because of me, her dojo was burned down, and we were forced to flee Japan. Because of me, we were again forced to flee England -- she had to _chose _between her children and grandchildren and me. She chose me, but I know that she hated that choice. And I was desperately sorry to force it upon her."

Carrie's hand rested on his shoulder. "None of that was your fault, Kenshin."

"But it _was_," he said, "Because I chose to stay with her, what we endured was _my fault_. Don't you see?"

"Fish," Carrie said. "Burning."

He hastily flipped the salmon fillet over and then turned back to her. "Carrie, Kaoru told me something before she died and that was that she wanted me to find someone like me -- someone Immortal. She told me that she thought I would be happiest with another Immortal and that the hard parts ... the hard parts of being Immortal are best shared with another like me."

Carrie lifted an eyebrow. "And is that why you're interested in me?"

He puffed a sharp breath out. "I told Kaoru I would wait for her to be reincarnated and I would scour the globe until I found her again. And I waited _seventy years _and she was never reborn. And so I finally took another wife ... and I don't regret it, and I loved Atsuko with all my heart, but Gods, I missed Kaoru so much sometimes."

Carrie was smirking. He realized this belatedly, and looked up at her. She folded her arms and lifted an eyebrow at him and said, "You're not the only Immortal who talks to dead people when they croak, apparently."

"Oro?"

"You're an ass. Were you ever going to tell me?"

He closed his eyes with sudden awful, dawning, realization of where she was going. "Who did you see?"

"A man named Hiko. He's really rather charming, in a sarcastic sort of way." Carrie reached out and slapped Kenshin across the top of the head. "That's for lying to me by omission."

"Owe!" He ducked back before she could swat him again. "Carrie-dono, what did he tell you?"

"That I'm Kaoru, or was, once. There's a sort've poetic justice in that, I suppose, if she told you to find another Immortal and you said you'd wait for her." Carrie's eyes were very blue and clear and not particularly angry. She looked more hurt than furious. "You knew, didn't you?"

He turned back to the fish. "Yes. I knew."

"And you weren't going to _tell _me?"

He turned off the burner and set the fish aside, then regarded her solemnly for a long moment. "I've known for seven years. Since not the first, but the second time, we met. However, I was not certain if I should tell you. I was -- am -- afraid that you would think my interest in you was solely because of her."

She folded her arms. "That's what Hiko said you were worried about."

"Carrie," he rested his hands on her arms, "I am trying very hard to see _you_. But many of the things I loved about Kaoru -- they are the same, in you. You two are so very much alike. And sometimes, it is very confusing for me."

"Is that why you hugged me, yesterday? You let me touch you and you held me? You were _confused_?" Her words were hard, and her eyes suddenly dangerous.

"In part." He sat down on the bed and cradled his hands in his head. "You must be very angry at me now."

There was silence from her. He waited for the blows to fall, or for the tears to begin. Instead, after a moment, he felt the bed dip as she sat down beside him. "And all these years, were you my friend because I was once _her_?"

"Carrie-dono," he said quietly, "That isn't true, entirely. Before I knew who you once were, I wanted to be your friend."

A hand touched him, but not with the furious blows he had been expecting. She put one hand on his shoulder and the other tugged his fingers away from his face. "Kenshin, look at me."

He blinked at her, aware that he was perilously close to some very unmanly tears. He was frustrated and confused and terribly saddened that she had found out. And angry, at Hiko, but it was a helpless sort of anger: Hiko would do as Hiko did, and Hiko was _dead_. There wasn't a damn thing he could do about Hiko deciding to tell Carrie the truth. He was desperately sorry to have hurt her, however, even though he saw no way of avoiding having done so.

"Does it matter?" Her words were soft, and her gentle tone shocked him. He had been expecting more angry recriminations. "If you look at me, and see her, does it matter? I am, after all, _her_."

"But you're not." He folded his arms and glanced away from her. "You're _not _Kaoru. You're someone else as well."

"So you see both of us, then?"

He heaved a ragged sigh. "Yes, sometimes."

"And is that not the truth? That I am me, but on some level, I am also her?"

He glanced up at her, surprised by her words. She grimaced. "I was terribly mad at you at first, but Hiko pointed that fact out to me, and made me realize how confusing it must be for you to know me. He doesn't have much tact, does he, by the way?"

"No." Kenshin sighed. "He doesn't. And Carrie -- even if I had never recognized Kaoru looking back at me from your eyes, I think we would have been good friends."

"We click."

"Yes. I see you as _you _most of the time, Carrie. In some ways you are very like Kaoru; in others, you are quite different."

"Now," she said, "how would you react, _really_, if you saw me dating other boys?"

He hesitated, then decided he owed her the truth. "Since we're being honest with each other, I will tell you that it would hurt a great deal. Carrie-dono, I _want _you. I want you to be _mine_. But everything I said -- it is still true. And you are not Kaoru and you are very young and you will live a very long time. I wish for you to be happy, even if it comes at my own expense."

She hugged herself and stared at the fish in the skillet on the counter for a moment before glancing sideways at him, "Kenshin, the knowledge that you would let me go, if I wanted ... that means more to me than you will ever know. I have had a man try to force me into a relationship entirely against my will and with no concern for who I am or what I wanted. You, in contrast, respect me. You allow me to be _me_. You have never told me what to do or how I should think or act. I thought at first this meant you did not care, that you were not attracted to me."

"Never think that!"

"Mmm." She turned around to face him, tucking one foot up onto the bed, under her other leg. "Kenshin, seriously, look at me again."

He met her eyes. They were very blue and somehow far older than her years. She reached a hand out and stroked his jaw. He was mesmerized by her touch and her gaze. "I've had dreams of you, you know. I think they're dreams from a past life. Perhaps something in me remembers being Kaoru."

"I ... it is not impossible." His heart was in his throat. _Tammy knew too, on some level. _"Carrie, even so you are not her."

"I didn't think you cared about me like that." He saw her swallow hard, Adam's apple bobbing in her throat. "Kenshin, now I see it is that you care so much that you put my welfare before your own desires. It's very humbling, Kenshin. And -- I don't want anyone else. How could anyone else measure up to what you are offering me?"

He smiled faintly. "You exaggerate a bit, Carrie-dono."

"Do I?" she leaned towards him. "Do you realize that I feel the same way about you?"

He closed his eyes. "I know that you have put the welfare of others before your own for two lifetimes, Carrie-dono. This one has been in awe of that love for others for over a century, that he has."

Her hand brushed his jaw again, thumb tracing the line of the scar that ran from his chin to under his eyes. He felt her weight shift on the bed, but he didn't realize what she intended until her other hand came up to rest on his shoulder and her lips pressed to his. He gasped, surprised, and opened his eyes.

She giggled and started to move back.

Belatedly, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her to him, and kissed her back, much less chastely than her brief peck had been. She stiffened in surprise. It was her first time kissing anyone _willingly_, he suspected, so he was very gentle, and encouraging, and patient. He also loosened his grip, giving her the option of retreat.

She didn't pull away as he feared she might. Instead, after a moment, she relaxed into his arms, and started to kiss him back. Her hands rested on his shoulders.

After a long moment, he very reluctantly pulled back. She smiled and touched her fingers to her lips. "Umm. Wow."

He blinked. His heart was racing and he understood the _wow _she had uttered very well indeed. He felt like echoing her words. Instead, he said, "We have class, that we do, Carrie-dono, and we should eat breakfast beforehand. And -- for now, I want you to know that I will not allow anything to happen between us beyond a kiss. You may want it, and I certainly do ... but neither of us are ready for anything more."

She nodded. He saw relief in her eyes, and knew he'd chosen correctly. As much as he wanted to take things far beyond a kiss she was not ready for that step. And neither was he, in truth.

He rose from the bed and cut the salmon in half with the spatula and handed her portion to her on a plate along with a small bowl of rice and chopsticks. They ate in silence, then, but it was a comfortable sort of silence.

__

All things considered, Kenshin thought, as he watched her eat, _that went rather well._


	12. Chapter 12

The Set Design 101 teacher , a Mrs. Andrews, was an older woman with craggy, weathered features and silver hair cut short above her ears. She wore no makeup and appeared to have little sense of humor, either. She addressed them peremptorily, "Welcome to Set Design 101. If anyone is taking this because they think it will be an easy elective please withdraw from the course this afternoon. I assume all of you are here to learn, and you _will _learn."

Kenshin sat quietly at the back of the class as he listened to her describe the course curriculum -- it was a mix of classwork and hands-on learning, but most of the emphasis appeared to be on really designing sets. _Translation: We are the slave labor for the school's theater department_, Kenshin thought, when he realized just how much after-class work would be involved.

"Your first assignment," the woman said, "due Monday will be to create a miniature diorama at 12:1 scale that appears realistic when filmed. You will find the details in this handout."

Kenshin sighed. He was going to miss Monday's class because the flight back from San Francisco wouldn't arrive until the late afternoon. The teacher went on to explain the particulars of the assignment; he took detailed and studious notes in neat Japanese.

__

I have exactly a year's modern schooling to my credit, and I didn't do very good as a High School student last year. This is not going to be easy ... He held his hand up and, with considerable embarrassment, asked the teacher to repeat a point he'd missed because he'd been mentally translating her words into Japanese and had been unable to follow along as quickly as she was talking. She frowned at him but repeated herself.

His grades at the high school had been mediocre, though the teachers had mostly liked him. _And the only way I was able to get into this college was because of my track times_.

Mrs. Andrews dismissed them very early, with a warning that was the last time they'd be allowed to leave before the end of class. Kenshin packed his notes away, then approached her at the front of the room. "Mrs. Andrews, I am very sorry to bother you, I know you must be busy, but I have a problem ..."

She scowled at him.

"I won't be here on Monday. I have a ... family matter ... to attend to in Los Angeles. I was hoping I could turn my assignment in on Tuesday?" He gave her his most pleading smile. "I know it is a lot to ask, but ..."

"The assignment is due on Monday." She had _no _sense of humor, he decided. None. He didn't like her at all but he owed her respect as his teacher.

He kept a polite expression on his face by force of will. "May I turn it in on Friday, then?"

"That would be fine."

"Thank you, ma'am."

She scowled down at him. "Aren't you here on an athletic scholarship?"

"I will be on the track team, yes. They made some exceptions on my admission. There are some irregularities in my school history, but I am very good at athletics," Kenshin confirmed candidly, though he unsure why she was asking. "Though I do not have a scholarship; I declined the offer of money. I have an inheritance sufficient for my needs and I thought that the money for the scholarship should be used for a student who truly needs it."

"You don't look much like a jock." She was still scowling at him.

Kenshin smiled his most innocent and charming smile. "I have noticed that I am a little short."

She snorted skeptically.

__

Oh, I see you're going to be a challenge, Kenshin looked up at the teacher and said, "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Andrews."

"Friday, Kenny, if you can't turn that assignment in on Monday." She turned her back on him.

--------------

The Geometry 101 teacher was, to Kenshin's relief, a much friendlier sort -- he was a round, short little man who made everyone introduce themselves to the class. When Kenshin's turn came he simply said, "I'm Kenny Myojin, and I'm Japanese."

"Ah." The teacher -- his name was Dr. Nielsen -- was bald on top and in need of a haircut on the sides. He scratched the puffy white tuft of hair that fluffed out over his left ear and said, "And besides being Japanese, can you introduce yourself?"

"Hey, I saw you playing with swords in the gym a few days ago!" One of the other students exclaimed.

Kenshin bobbed his head in acknowledgement. "Aa, I study martial arts -- you saw me with my friend Carrie."

"That was _amazing_. It looked like you were _dancing_!" The other student was a girl, and her eyes were wide. "Is Carrie your girlfriend?"

"Iie ..." Kenshin started to deny it. Then he remembered that kiss, that absolutely splendid kiss that had rocked his world to its very core, and the discussion they had that very morning. He also noted the interest in the teenager's eyes. She was rather unsubtle in her attempt to find out if he was single, and he didn't need that complication. He said, quietly, "Yeah, she is."

"Damn! Lucky girl!"

Kenshin shook his head. "I am the one who is lucky." _Unbelievably utterly and totally blessed to have Carrie in my life, actually ... _He realized he had a smile on his face that was a bit more sappy than usual.

The teacher was grinning at him. So were the rest of the students. "So Romeo," the teacher said, "how do you like Canada?"

__

Romeo. Kenshin decided he had another reason to hate geometry; that was a nickname he hoped they would soon forget.

----------------

Kenshin had ten minutes to get from Geometry 101 to English 101 and they were on opposite ends of the sprawling, mile-long campus. After a brief delay to explain to the Geometry teacher why Brandon -- who was also in the class, but who had been too sore to get out of bed -- was absent, he ran for the English building flat out, pony-tail flying behind him, backpack slung over one shoulder, sandaled feet pounding the pavement.

He hurdled a small creek, took a shortcut across a ball field, vaulted a low decorative fence with one hand, and skidded around a corner ... and very nearly ran the school's track coach down. His battle-honed reflexes took over, and he jumped sideways, coming to a stop balanced on top of the back of a park bench beside the path.

He had seen the man's photo on the Web site. He recognized him instantly; the man had a handlebar mustache that was decades out of style, balding blond hair that he nonetheless pulled back into a rather scraggly pony tail, and the long, angular limbs of a distance runner. Kenshin, breathing a bit hard, stared at him. He wondered what sort of an impression he had just made -- honestly, he had no clue.

"Kenny Myojin," the track coach said, staring up at Kenshin. Recognition was mutual and Kenshin was unsurprised; he was just as distinctive in appearance as the coach. "I see they didn't exaggerate your abilities."

Kenshin hopped down from the back of the bench. "Mr. Hortman, I am sorry. I'm running late ..." he gestured helplessly towards the English building, which he could see a quarter mile in the distance. A quick glance at his watch verified he had four minutes to find his classroom.

"Literally running," the man said, with a snicker. "Don't worry about it. Nobody expects students to be on time the first day. Half of them are so lost they couldn't find their ass with their hands."

Kenshin blinked. "Et-to ..."

"Coach Hortman, by the way." The man held a hand out. Kenshin shook it, and couldn't help a small bow as well. It was so thoroughly ingrained in him that teachers were to be utterly respected, and coaches were somewhere between 'teacher' and 'martial arts instructor' in Kenshin's mind.

"Coach Hortman," Kenshin repeated.

"Or just Coach. I was a little skeptical when they said you were four foot eleven -- but I think you just cleared -- what would you say, four or five feet horizontally and three feet vertically? You've got legs, kid!"

Kenshin shrugged. For him, it was not all that remarkable of a leap. "I didn't want to knock you down, sir."

Hortman tilted his head sideways. "Have you ever considered gymnastics in addition to track? I can't believe you landed on the top of that bench like that. You didn't fall and you did it on the spur of the moment. I'd love to see what you could do on a balance beam or the uneven bars. My wife teaches gymnastics."

"Et-to ..." Kenshin shrugged. "Not really. Ah ... I do not mean to be rude, Coach Hortman-san, but I am running very late and I would prefer to make it on time. May I go?"

"Go," the man said, with a smile of encouragement.

Kenshin bowed and ran on. _Well, at least he thinks I can do the job! _Kenshin thought, with some amusement. As meetings went, that hadn't been bad.

----------------

Danny was in his English class.

Kenshin, breathing a little hard, slid into the desk next to him. "Hello, Danny-san."

"Danny," Danny corrected, with a quick smile. Kenshin blinked, realized that Danny knew enough about Japanese to hear the honorific he'd added to the end of his name, and wondered how he'd learned even that much. "Hey, Carrie told me what happened with Michael yesterday. All of it, if you know what I mean. Sonefabitch needs to have his ass handed to him by somebody."

"Violence rarely solves this sort of problem," Kenshin said, habitually, though he thought, _though sometimes a sound beating does discourage active malice. _"And anyway," he said in a lower voice, "I think Chiyoko's satisfied the requirement for 'revenge' given that I do not believe that Michael truly intended to run us off the road."

Danny snorted. "She kicks ass. Did Duncan ever tell you what happened when Amanda tried to get in a catfight with her?"

Kenshin's eyes widened. He wordlessly shook his head.

"Now, I like Amanda as much as the next guy ..." Here, Kenshin's snicker briefly interrupted Danny, who flashed him a grin of acknowledgement, "... but she's out of her league when it comes to fighting with someone like Chiyoko. Amanda decided Chiyoko was after Duncan's, ah, virtue and tried to punch her. Chiyoko kicked her ass. Then she told Mac, and Mac didn't speak to Amanda for a couple of months."

"I don't think there's any romantic interest there," Kenshin shook his head, bemused.

"From Mac? No." Danny shook his head vigorously. "Mac likes his women really feminine and, um, curvy. He sees Chiyoko as a student, maybe a little sister. He'll tease her until she's ready to kill him, but there's no attraction there, not at all."

"He teases her?" Kenshin had never witnessed this personally. He was struck by how much he didn't know about the woman he had once considered his daughter.

Danny nodded. Kenshin would have questioned him further about Chiyoko and Mac and their friendship, but the English professor walked in at that moment. A tall, very thin bald man wearing jeans and a sweater -- Kenshin thought he looked exactly like an English professor should.

He also assigned homework.

The homework was to write their life's biography, between 1,000 and 2,000 words, due the following Monday. Kenshin mentally winced. If he told the truth about his life the man would think he was telling a story. If he came up with a fictional essay, he would be lying to the teacher, which seemed like a much bigger deal than lying to create a fake identity. It was more personal.

__

And this is due Monday.

Kenshin rapidly calculated the assignment's worth in his head -- it was only five percent of the grade, based on the syllabus the teacher had provided. However, not turning in an assignment sat very wrong with him. Plus he suspected, given his painful lack of ability in written English, he might need every point he could earn just to pass.

__

Well, in the grand scheme of things, this is less of a moral dilemma than some other problems I've faced in my life, Kenshin thought, as he rose at the end of class and went to talk to the professor about turning the assignment in. This man, at least, was a little more flexible and agreed to let him turn his assignment in on Tuesday when he was back from his trip.

----------------

The Intro to Film-making class was his fourth and last of the day, and was taught by a tiny little Asian man who, to Kenshin's delight, proved to be as Japanese as his surname had suggested. _Very _Japanese, with a definite accent in English and familiar body language.

When he called Kenshin's name while taking attendance he pronounced _Myojin _correctly, and asked, "Is Kenny short for something?"

"Kenshin, Sasaki-sensei," he said, since the man was very likely to hear Carrie call him by that sooner or later anyway. It didn't match his visa, but he doubted that would be a significant issue.

"Like the famous hitokiri, eh? Very unusual, very unusual." The man nodded his head happily.

Kenshin very nearly bit his tongue. In Japanese -- he was too flustered to manage English -- he said, "Yes, Sasaki-sensei. Like Himura Kenshin, yes."

__

Damn! Kenshin thought, and his fears were confirmed when the man tilted his head and said, "Your hair, and the scars you have, how funny you would be named that."

__

I am so sorry, Mother and Father, for the untruth I am about to make using your names, Kenshin thought, when he offered an explanation, still in Japanese, "My parents had unusual senses of humor. They named me after Himura because of my hair and the scars happened later -- fate has a sense of humor, I think." It was a lie that was still more plausible than the reality of the matter, which was that Mr. Sasaki had a hundred and sixty-some year old samurai enrolled in his Film 101 class.

Sasaki said, in English, "You speak excellent Japanese."

"I am full-blooded Japanese," Kenshin said, with dignity, switching back to English as well. "The hair is a genetic quirk. As was Himura Kenshin's, most likely. A form of albinism has occasionally been suggested as a possibility to explain it."

"I am very sorry. I did not realize ... well, welcome to my class." Sasaki moved on to the next student.

Kenshin was relieved to no longer be in the spotlight. His relief was short lived when Sasaki explained that the first assignment would be due at the end of the week, on Friday.

Film 101 taught basic film-making skills, with the final project being a short film. Kenshin had understood that when he signed up for the course. What he hadn't realized was that he would have to create the story for the film.

__

Wait! He thought, with some desperation. _I thought we'd be shooting from a script!_

Oh, no. Sasaki's first assignment was to come up with the script for their project, which would be due at the end of the semester -- a ten minute short film. _I don't know how to write a story! _Kenshin thought, desperately. _Particularly in English!_

And it was due _Friday_.

Kenshin contemplated that daunting prospect. He didn't even know where to begin,

------------------

At noon, Carrie was halfway through her classes -- she had an hour lab in the morning and was carrying six classes to Kenshin's four. She sensed the buzz of another Immortal approaching as she stood in front of her room and fumbled in her purse for her key card. She was expecting Kenshin, and looked up with a grin on her face.

__

He kissed me. He really _kissed me. _Kenshin, she knew in her heart, wasn't about to mislead anyone on his romantic intentions. He wanted her, and the thought was scary and intimidating and yet incredibly wonderful. _Himura Kenshin wants me_.

__

I was once his wife.

That thought was a bit odder. However, Kenshin's own concerns about her identity, and his insistence that she wasn't Kaoru, had served to settle her fears a bit. And, in the end, did it really matter?

He had loved Kaoru for a reason, and she knew from old family letters she had read, and stories passed down, that he and Kaoru had been inseparable. She suspected that had been for a reason of basic compatibility between their personalities. _He says I am much like her_, she thought, _and he appeals to me. Not just the appearance -- though he's certainly gorgeous -- but who he is. He cares about other people more than he cares about himself. Some people claim to be that way, or pretend, but he really does._

And yes, he was all sorts of hot. His smile alone could make her weak at the knees.

__

He wants commitment in a relationship. Can I really give him that?

She thought she could. No other man had ever interested her the way Kenshin Himura had since the moment she'd seen him through adult eyes a few days before. Well, in truth, she'd had a bit of a crush on him since she was a young teenager and he'd saved her from Marshall -- but her reaction as an adult was very different from how she had felt as a teenager. As a kid, she had wanted him to like her. As an adult, she wanted no one else to be the center of her world.

Kenshin appeared, laboring under a backpack full of textbooks that appeared too big for his tiny frame. He was looking particularly good this morning, she thought -- he had on tight-fitting jeans, sandals, and a purple t-shirt that brought out the amethyst color of his eyes. Several strands of hair had escaped from his ponytail and were hanging in his eyes; he brushed them impatiently back as he walked towards her.

"Whew." He grinned, obviously happy to see her. The expression on his face made her heart lift and she returned it with a smile of her own. He asked, "How goes your first day?"

"I already have enough homework to choke a goat, but otherwise, good." She found her key card in one of the pockets of Kenshin's duster and waved it in front of the lock. Her door buzzed open. "Come on in."

He dropped his bag inside the door and glanced curiously around. She realized this was the first time he'd seen the room she shared with Megumi, and suddenly, she was a little self-conscious of the posters of assorted rock stars and actors she'd put on the walls, and of the very fluffy puppy dog plushy on her bed. It was the size of a small sheep dog and she wasn't about to admit to Kenshin that she slept hugging it.

Meg's side of the room was a lot more sophisticated, her satin sheets that contrasted sharply with her own quilt that had teddy bears printed on it. Meg had a tasteful photo of her family on the wall, and nothing else.

__

My side looks like a little girl's room, Carrie thought, squirming under his scrutiny. She mentally dared him to say anything.

Kenshin nodded at the posters on her wall. "You like Dancing Men?"

She winced. _Dancing Men _was a band she _did _like, but they were weren't exactly considered cool or sophisticated. Her father called them that _damn pop band with the pretty-boys_. Meg sneered about her love of their happy, cheerful songs regularly. She nodded with extreme reluctance.

Kenshin grinned. She thought he was going to laugh, but he said, "I like that one they sing about the rock star who falls in love with the waitress. "

__

Oh. She knew exactly which song he was talking about. It was one of her favorites. She knew all the words by heart, and often worked out to it.

"I listen to their music when I'm jogging, quite a bit. It's got a good beat," Kenshin said, casually, sitting down next to her stuffed dog on her bed. She watched, with bemusement, as he pulled the dog into his lap. "So, where do you want to go for lunch? I shall bribe you with food in exchange for some help with my homework."

"I have two hours before my next class. There's a Chinese buffet I saw about a quarter mile from here, on the south side, that looked promising. Lots of cars in the parking lot. It's walking distance if we hurry."

"It's a deal," he patted her stuffed dog on the head, and then put him back down next to her pillow. He stood back up, and she took that as a cue to head for the door.

"Carrie-dono, wait a minute please."

She paused, wondering what he wanted.

He stared up at her, for a long moment, eyes searching. Then, almost shyly, he said, "This morning, when we kissed ... umm ..." he shuffled in place.

"It was good, wasn't it?" She'd never been kissed before in her life. "Umm, I think it was good."

"Oh, yes." He stepped closer to her, but his eyes were terribly uncertain. "I ... umm ..."

"Could we kiss again?" She felt funny asking, but suddenly she wanted to, very much. And she didn't know how to tell him otherwise and her desire for him moved her to _say _something.

He nodded, and reached for her, hands resting on his waist, pulling her close. She had to bend over to kiss him, but he didn't seem to mind, and he pulled her closer. She wrapped her arms around him. He was both hard-muscled and bony, with not a spare ounce of fat on him anywhere. When she spread her fingers wide across his back she could feel ridged, twisted scars crossing wiry muscle and prominent shoulder blades and vertebrae.

His kiss was gentle, but insistent, and it took her breath away. After a long moment he leaned back, hips and flat, washboard abs still pressed against her thighs and stomach, and gazed up at her, a smile playing around his mouth She felt a bulge from his groin against her leg and was suddenly, acutely, self-conscious. His eyes were wide, and he looked as flushed as she felt.

"Umm," he said, then stepped back. She glanced down; she couldn't help it.

He turned pink in a whole new way.

She giggled. His expression turned peculiar; she couldn't quite figure out what he was thinking. _I did that to him! I made him get hard just by kissing him! _It was an interesting realization; she had never before thought about how she would feel about a man's reaction to her attentions. Real, tangible evidence that he found her desirable was making a fat bulge in his jeans.

He snorted, finally, in reaction to her laughter. "I will have you know that you are terrible for my virtue, woman." With a great amount of dignity, but moving somewhat stiffly, he scooped up his bag and headed for his room. "I'm going to go drop my books off. Will you meet me downstairs in the lobby in five minutes?"

"Okay," she said, somewhat faintly. After he was gone she flopped backwards onto the bed and heaved out a gusty sigh. "I am _so _in love."


	13. Chapter 13

Kenshin had just settled down to a plate of moo goo gai pan at the buffet when his cell phone rang. He glanced at it, and very nearly didn't answer when he saw no number was displaying on the caller ID. He was far more interested in talking to Carrie.

__

I'm acting like a teenager, he thought, with amusement at himself. He flipped the phone open, "Kenshin speaking."

"Err, is this Kenny Myojin?"

"This is he."

"This is Officer Green."

He remembered the cop from the day before. "Oh, yes, officer. How can I help you?"

"You're apparently in, ah, charge, of a Morgan Trevor according to her parents?"

Well, he had figured she would turn up sooner or later, though in the custody of the police would not have been one of his preferred methods for finding her. Kenshin said warily, "Yes, I have temporary guardianship while she's here in Canada. How much trouble is she in?"

The cop sounded vaguely amused by Kenshin's quick assessment of Morgan's likelihood of being in trouble. "None, at this time. She tried to rent a hotel room and the hotel called CPS because of her age. Her parents said you were responsible for her. Nice people, by the way."

Kenshin heard the sarcasm there and not for the first time wondered about parents who would so willingly send their daughter across an ocean and into the care of a strange man that they knew nothing of. Granted, George Trevor had attested to his honor, but were he in her father's shoes he would have not made the same decisions. "Aa, I am responsible. Did they tell you why she's here?"

"Yeah, they filled me in. I'm surprised that the Brits didn't put her into protective custody."

Kenshin ran a hand over his face. He'd wondered about that too; George said the British authorities didn't believe she was in enough danger. "She's a troubled kid, officer. I'm honestly not sure why she ran away, but I hope you're not going to put her in the foster system. The people after her apparently have resources beyond the usual. They're very, very wealthy from what I've been told. I would be concerned that they could locate her using the government records, even those that are supposed to be sealed."

Records were only as secure as the people protecting them, and there was always _somebody _who could be bribed, in Kenshin's experience.

Officer Green sighed. "She's sixteen and she didn't actually do anything wrong other than strike out on her own. She's agreeing to stay with Richie now."

"For what it's worth, Richie's a good guy. He grew up a foster kid himself, and is very good with teens." Kenshin blew a sharp breath out. "I'll have a talk with her later, too. Do you need me to come down and pick her up?"

"No, Richie's already on his way." Officer Green hesitated before adding, "I just wanted to touch base with you about her. Kenny, you seem like a good guy and that girl's trouble. I can't go into any details, because it's confidential due to her age, but -- she's trouble. And she's been in trouble. Know what I mean?"

"Thanks for the warning. I suspected she might have some issues in her background." Kenshin didn't need details; he already had her pegged as a problem child. He'd dealt with plenty like her -- and really, he had been a troubled teen himself, though he had grown up in a very different time and place and had become a killer rather than a delinquent. _I wonder what Officer Green would have made of my juvenile record?_

"A few issues, yes." Green's voice was very dry. "Be careful."

------------------

Carrie continued on to her afternoon classes and Kenshin, with homework in mind, headed back to his room. However, as he walked into the lobby he heard Shannon's voice, "Daaaaaaaad!"

Shannon was by the stairs, arms folded, looking mulishly angry. A day's aging on his injuries had allowed the whack to his face to turn into a black eye and a fat lip. The gash on his forehead was a thin line of tiny stitches, slightly shiny with a recent coating of what looked like Neosporin.

The man he had addressed in a whining, unhappy tone as _Dad _was obviously related to Shannon. He was an older, heavier version of the boy. Shannon's father was dressed in an expensive suit, with equally expensive shoes and a fancy watch. He looked wealthy and powerful, exactly as Kenshin had assumed.

"You should have called me right away!" Shannon's father was also taller than Shannon, and he was crowding Shannon's personal space.

Shannon took a step back and stared at the ground. "I'm fine, dad!"

The man caught Shannon's jaw in his fingers and inspected the cut closely. "That's going to leave a scar! It's going to fucking scar!"

"The doctor said it's going to be very faint, but I could have some treatments done to help the appearance if I wanted." Shannon pulled back, but his dad wouldn't let go of his jaw. Somewhat muffled by his father's grip, Shannon insisted, "Owe! Dad, I'm sore!"

"So hold still!" His father poked at his black eye, for reasons Kenshin didn't understand. "This could be broken."

"They took X-rays! It's just a bad bruise. I'm _fine_."

"Who the hell was _driving_?"

"Sandy. He's a friend. We were going to Mason's Creek ... owe!" Kenshin winced in sympathy when Mr. Reilly pulled Shannon's eyelid down and stared at his eye, which had a nice red hematoma in the white.

"Was he sober?"

"He was sober," Kenshin said, behind the two of them. He let some of his annoyance touch his voice; he didn't like the way that the man was treating his son. Shannon was a grownup at twenty and more than capable of taking care of himself. "I made sure he was. It was my truck he was driving."

Shannon saw him and finally managed to get free of his father's grip. "Dad, this is Kenny Myojin. Kenny, this is my dad, Allen Reilly."

"Hello, Mr. Reilly." Kenshin held his hand out. Rather reluctantly, Mr. Reilly took it, and stared down at him dubiously. He reiterated, "It was my truck. Sandy was driving, but he was completely sober."

"Why was this Sandy driving your truck?" Mr. Reilly wanted to know..

Kenshin still did not care for his tone, but said calmly, "I'm short, and if we moved the seat far enough forward for me to be comfortable driving then Brandon would have been very uncomfortable ... he has spina bifida and his legs are in braces. He's also very tall."

Reilly's nostrils flared. His gaze shot back to his son. He roared loud enough for everyone in the building to most likely here, "Shannon. Is he referring to that crippled gay you were telling me about last year? The one who made so much trouble for everyone? _What were you doing in the CAR WITH HIM!"_

Kenshin flinched, realizing belatedly that he had just made a great deal of trouble for Shannon. Shannon held his hands up placatingly, "Dad, dad, calm down."

"I invited both of them," Kenshin replied, soothingly.

"And who are you, Brandon's boyfriend?"

The man was just rude, Kenshin decided, and not worthy of his respect even as the father of a friend. Kenshin said coldly, "My girlfriend would be shocked and rather disappointed if that assumption were true about my sexuality. Shannon came because he was worried about our safety. And he was very right that Michael and his friends might make trouble for us. Unfortunately, Michael was drunk and when he passed us he pushed us off the road. He has been arrested for the DUI."

Reilly frowned.

"Come on, dad," Shannon said, "gay isn't contagious. I think Brandon's a complete idiot, but I don't want anything to happen to him. That's the only reason I went."

"Your hero complex is going to get you hurt one of these days," Reilly glared at his son. "And I don't like you around those types of people. You know that."

"Yes sir," Shannon agreed, his voice very soft.

Reilly sighed. "Come on, kid. Let's go get something to eat ..."

Kenshin watched them walk out. Shannon shot him a quick, fleeting glance over his shoulder -- his eyes were dark, and very unhappy. Kenshin thought, with pain in his heart, _Oh, Shinya.. He is no Yahiko. He loves you, but he does not even begin to understand you._

-----------------

Carrie was sprawled on his bed, feet waving in the air, reading a textbook. Kenshin, seated at his desk, glanced over his shoulder at her, briefly pausing from making his diorama. He couldn't stop _looking _at her; his heart seemed to swell in his chest with joy whenever he saw her.

Her curls fell around her face -- it was late, and she had showered before coming by his room so they could study together. Her hair was damp, shiny with moisture, and loose while it dried. He had heard her grumble about her curls, calling them _impossible to manage_, but he loved the way they persisted in springing free of all restraint. She always had one or two locks hanging down loose, and a few short strands sticking out above her ears. He thought the wild, untamable nature of her hair suited her very well.

He wanted to run his hands through that hair and to smell the scent of her shampoo, which he now knew was strawberry. _Bah! I'm hopeless, _he thought at himself, with some personal and private amusement at how quickly he had become totally smitten. It had been that way with Kaoru, as well, though he had taken great pains not to show it except in the care he had taken _of _her. He had fallen for her early and hard and it had been difficult to hide that, quite often.

__

Different time, different place, Kenshin thought, _and I am different. I have changed -- I have learned that it is okay for me to share my life with someone, that I am worthy of love. And gods, do I want this relationship with Carrie to work out._

Carrie was exactly what he wanted in a mate --- her combination of fire, maturity, and innocence, plus that sparkling sense of humor, spoke to something deep within Kenshin's soul. It didn't help that she was beautiful, either.

She looked up and saw he was watching her. Carrie grinned in response to his gaze, and focused on the diorama on the table. "That's really good. I never thought of you as an artist."

He glanced at the diorama, which was of the inside of Kaoru's dojo, built from memory. The varnish was drying on the floor and walls and he was making name plates with a very tiny brush and a bit of ink. The one balanced on his finger at the moment said _Kenji, assistant master_. "It's not really creating art, just replicating something that existed once," he said, diffidently.

He was embarrassed by the attention but, still, the work required had appealed to him. He was truly enjoying this project, though he wished he had more time to finish it.

"It's still amazing work," Sandy said, from his desk, where he was typing one-handed on his laptop. Sandy was left-handed and it was that arm that was strapped to his chest with the shoulder still swollen and bruised. Unable to write with his right hand, he was even typing his _math _homework up.

"How are you feeling, anyway?" Kenshin asked. It was Thursday, and he had been out of the hospital since Tuesday morning -- but Kenshin was worried.

"I'm fine," Sandy said, quietly. "Kenny, have you noticed that Shannon is avoiding us?"

"Aa, I noticed. His father gave him a very hard time about the accident." Kenshin hesitated and wondered how much he should say, then decided Sandy had the sensitivity to understand this problem. "Shannon may have to choose between his own beliefs and his heart's desires and the teachings of his parents. It's not an easy choice for anyone to make."

Sandy nodded. "He's got it rough. -- So," he changed the subject, "you're going home to meet the parents, hmm? And I thought you two were claiming you weren't a couple."

"I'm just getting my sword," Carrie said, without looking up from her textbook. "My father likely won't approve of Kenshin and I, though frankly, he doesn't get a vote. He's never liked the idea of me dating period. He was born in the 1800's. Literally, Sandy! Women were _property _when he was born. More than once he's talked about _arranging _a marriage for me."

Kenshin cleared his throat, then said quietly, "Carrie, I will not make you choose between Soujiro and Akane and I. And Soujiro doesn't consider you property."

"No, but he treats me that way sometimes. He's _so _controlling. It's ridiculous." Kenshin was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. "Don't forget that the only reason he even let me come here to college is you agreed to be my bodyguard. I can flat guarantee he's going to flip out when you tell him it took us four days to decide we were a couple." She stabbed a pen in Kenshin's direction. "And Kenshin, I still say we don't need to tell him yet."

Kenshin shook his head. Deceiving Soujiro and Akane was the last thing he wanted to do. "Carrie, I will not present an untruth to Soujiro about our relationship. I will also not allow this relationship to go any farther without his and Akane's blessing."

Sandy made a startled snorting noise. "That's a bit old fashioned!"

Carrie just blew a raspberry at him and returned to studying, or at least pretending to study.

Kenshin dabbed a bit of glue on the tiny name tile and used tweezers to stick it to the wall in the diorama. He held it in place while waiting for the glue to set and said, "Sometimes, old fashioned ways make sense. I have no interest in causing trouble between Carrie and her parents. I respect them both a great deal and I have known her mother since she was a small child. I am not certain how they will react to us. Earning their approval may require a bit of persistence -- however, we have no shortage of time."

"I'm afraid we'll have to wait for my father to die of old age before he approves of me having a relationship with _anyone_. Seriously. He made me promise to not even _date _anyone in college before he let me go."

Sandy whistled, low. "That's serious. I think Brandon and I were both allowed to date when we turned fifteen. And I thought my mother was unrealistic about that age!"

"Yeah, well, try having a century old Immortal for a father. And then try getting kidnapped at thirteen. My parents are fucking _paranoid _now. I wasn't even allowed to go over to my friends' houses or out to the movies in the evening -- I had to go to a matinee while it was still light out or go with my father. When he had time! I wasn't allowed to have a job, or do after school sports, or _anything_. They were so scared some random Immortal was going to take my head if he caught me alone, or that I would simply run into stranger danger ... gods."

"Mmm." Kenshin said. "Soujiro and Akane both also have plenty of personal experience with how evil humanity can be. They love you very much and want nothing bad to happen to you. I know that perhaps their approach was a bit ..."

"... stifling?" she interjected.

"... yes, perhaps." Kenshin bowed his head. "Their concerns for your safety were valid. As you well know."

"But I'm not thirteen anymore!" She shook her head. "I can take care of myself! And I'm still not free. Much as I like you, Kenshin -- what would you do if I wanted to go out on the town, alone?"

"I would tell you to be careful," he said, "you have proven to me that you are more than capable of defending yourself."

Her eyes narrowed. "Prove it. I'm going to walk out this door and go out by myself. It's nine o'clock at night. There might be bad guys out there."

"Ahhhh ..." Kenshin started to protest. Then he stopped. He wasn't going to go back on his words, and, moreover, she _was _capable of taking care of herself. She was twenty years old, she could fight on a level very close to his own and she had recently beaten an Immortal in a training fight who was over thousand years old -- Amanda was very good.

Grudgingly, Kenshin said, "Take my sword. And _be careful, _please, Carrie-dono. And take your cell phone!"

She stared at him with apparent disbelief written on her features. "You're seriously going to let me go?"

"You said you wanted to go out." Kenshin said, now a bit amused. He felt bad for her; Kaoru, in his time, had been independent to a fault. He had often griped about Kaoru's unwillingness to follow his directions, but he had also recognized her deep and abiding determination to forge her own way in life. It had certainly chaffed at Carrie's soul to be so constrained by her father's orders. "I'm certain you will be fine. Do you have money for a cab or do you intend to walk or ride the bus?"

"Umm."

He was reasonably sure she hadn't thought even so far ahead as to where she wanted to _go_. He suggested cheerfully, "I already checked out the bus routes. It's a straight shot to Joe's on Line 134 and it runs every half hour until midnight. It should be able a fifteen, twenty minute ride. Danny's working there tonight and I'm betting you'll find a few other friendly faces there, that you will."

She mulled that over. Finally, she said, "It would be a lot more fun if you went with me."

Kenshin indicated his diorama with the brush in his hand. "I have homework to finish, Carrie-dono, and it is due tomorrow. After this I have quite a bit of math homework that also must be turned in Friday."

"You said you'd need my help ..." Now she was stalling.

"Sandy can help me if I need any." Kenshin rose, walked to the closet, and handed her his duster and sword. "Be careful, and have fun."

She stood there, looking dumbfounded, for a long moment. He wondered if she somehow felt rejected that he wasn't going with her, and he said, "We'll be in San Francisco this weekend. We can catch a movie together or something of that nature then, that we can."

"Umm. Thanks, Kenshin."

After she had departed, Kenshin sat back down at the desk. Sandy stared at him for a long moment before saying, "Umm, aren't you going to follow her or anything?"

"Nope," Kenshin turned his attention back to the diorama. "Carry would sense me if I did."

"Umm, want me to?"

Kenshin turned very serious eyes on his roommate. "Sandy, in all honesty, if Carrie runs into trouble that she can't handle there would be nothing you could do to help her. Most likely she would end up protecting you. She is very skilled with a sword and she has a good head on her shoulders and she has trained since she was a very young child to defend herself. It is time that she be allowed to use her training."

"Aren't you worried about her? You told me people might try to kill her."

"Aa. I am worried. But I cannot watch her every minute of the day." Kenshin serenely began to assemble a rack of toothpick sized bokken that he had painstakingly wittled from some twigs. "Both of us must come to trust in her abilities. And -- she is good. She is not quite as good as I am, but better than anyone I know of except perhaps her father and Chiyoko."

"But she could be hurt!"

"Yes, she could," Kenshin agreed. "But were I to try to keep her safe by controlling her activities and following her like a shadow we would end up hating each other. Also, Carrie has a breaking point, at which she would forge out on her own anyway. I would rather not push her to that point. She is far less likely to be reckless if she is not angry."

Sandy huffed an aggravated sigh. "Sometimes, Kenshin, I really can believe you're a hundred and sixty years old. You're right, but there is no _way _I could be that calm if it were my girl who had enemies who wanted to lop her head off!"

------------

Danny was waiting tables, as Kenshin had said, at Joe's Bar. There were also three Immortals within its walls; she felt them as she stepped through the door.

"Carrie!" MacLeod waved at her. She spotted them at a large back table: MacLeod, Richie, and Adam, along with Tammy and Morgan. Morgan was looking very sullen, arms folded, a frown on her face, body language distinctly hostile.

Carrie hurried over and slid into an empty chair. "Hi guys!"

"You didn't come with Kenshin?" Richie seemed surprised by this.

"No, he had homework." Carrie flashed him a smile. "It's just me."

Adam said, with a smirk, "Ditched him, eh?"

"I just ..." she wondered if she had somehow hurt Kenshin's feelings by leaving him behind. "I ..."

"Oh, leave her alone, Adam." Tammy glared at him. "They're not attached at the hip. Carrie, how is Kenshin doing?"

Tammy, Carrie noted, pronounced 'Kenshin' correctly, with a long 'I.' "Pretty good. He's making a diorama for his set design class that's of the dojo that Kaoru owned in the 1800's. It's gorgeous; I never realized he had an any artistic ability."

Mac sipped a glass of some amber liquid, then said, "That actually doesn't surprise me. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he fights. Kenshin's a perfectionist, and he's got incredibly good powers of observation. Those are two important traits for an artist to have as well."

"How are _you _doing?" Richie asked her.

"Umm." Carrie glanced at Morgan, who met her look with unreadable brown eyes. "Good. Waiting for the other shoe to drop with my dad."

"Do you think he'll blame Kenshin for the accident?" Richie asked. He appeared to be drinking a cola, and the decimated remains of a dozen chicken wings littered a plate in front of him.

"Possibly. I don't know." Carrie was not looking forward to that discussion with her father. Had it been her choice entirely, she would have put off talking about both her new Immortality, the cause of that Immortality, and her budding relationship with Kenshin with her parents for as long as possible. _Why yes, Dad, that is a wedding ring. How observant of you to notice! _she thought, with a mildly hysterical bit of mental sarcasm. "Kenshin ... Kenshin and I ... umm ..."

Adam snickered. "We're taking bets, you know, on how quickly you two make a home run."

Tammy swatted him again, making him duck away and hold his hands up defensively. "No, we are _not_, Carrie. Don't mind Adam; he's just being an ass."

Carrie blushed, and was still blushing when Danny walked over to take her order. "Hey, Carrie." He rested a hand on her shoulder and informed the group, "I heard from Brandon that Carrie and Kenshin _kissed_. And Kenshin has publicly called her his girlfriend."

She growled at him, "Knock it off!"

"Mind," he ruffled her hair, making her flail at him harder and wordlessly shriek in humiliated outrage. "Why anyone would want to go out with this ugly woman I do not know. She's so very hard on the eyes!"

"You are such a brat!" She was tempted to hit him; only the thought of how it would look to the other customers if she started slugging their waiter and making a scene kept her from loosing her cool.

"Why, thank you." He sketched a bow in her general direction. "Do you have a drink request, Oh Hideous One?"

"A beer, I guess." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Any particular type of beer?"

"Uh," she realized she didn't know what type she wanted. She didn't exactly have much drinking experience. She picked a brand completely at random, "Budweiser?"

"On tap or a bottle or ...?"

"Bottle?"

"Coming up." He mussed her hair again, making her duck and lose her cool and slap at him, then wandered off.

"He's _so _not getting a tip from me," Carrie grumbled, though she knew she would.

"He's cute," Morgan said, eyes following Danny's path as he took an order from another table on the way to the bar. "I don't know why you're dating the short guy when you could have Danny. He likes you."

Carrie shook her head. "He's just a friend, Morgan. And 'the short guy' is Kenny and he is lots more than just a friend."

"He's _short_. You'll look weird kissing! He could, like, sit in your lap!"

Carrie said defensively, "I'm not going to let anything stupid like _height _stand between me and someone like Kenshin. He's a wonderful man."

"Still. I wouldn't want anyone to see me kissing someone like that. It's weird!"

Given Kenshin's ferocious desire for privacy and equally fierce aversion to public displays of emotion, Carrie didn't think that she would be kissing him in public any time soon. However, she still felt like she had to defend him. "I chose to look past the exterior, Morgan. Kenshin is a wonderful man."

"Awww," Danny said, returning with a bottle of beer. "You want any munchies, Princess?"

She was broke; the single beer, plus a tip for Danny, was going to wipe out the remainder of her allowance from her parents. She shook her head. "I'm fine."

Morgan suddenly rose, pushing her chair back. "I'm going to the bathroom," she announced, and walked off.

Richie said, after a moment, "Someone should probably go keep an eye on her."

Carrie realized that all four men were looking at her. Macleod rolled his eyes significantly towards the restroom door. She wanted to ask, _Why not Tammy_? But Tammy didn't strike her as the type able to handle a sulky teenager. _Like I could_. _I just want to smack her. My father would have blistered my butt for running off like she did. And then he would have had me running laps around the block for hours._

Groaning, she left her beer on the table and followed Morgan's path to the lady's room. There, she found Morgan applying makeup in the mirror.

"Hey," Carrie said, from behind her. "Apparently I've been appointed to make sure you don't slash your wrists or crawl out a window."

She meant her words to be funny, but Morgan didn't say a word. She just continued to brush mascara through her eyelashes. Carrie sighed, and leaned against the counter next to her. "Must be rough. You know that Richie and Mac helped save my life a long time ago. They're good guys and they're only trying to help you."

"Richie lectured me. All the way home." She sounded like she was pouting. "He kept saying how dangerous the streets are."

"Richie would know. He was a runaway as a teenager. Grew up in group homes and foster homes, too. He's had it rough." Carrie rummaged in her purse, found her lip gloss, and turned around to face the mirror. She wasn't currently wearing any makeup but a bit of girly fussing seemed called for, since Morgan had moved on to primping her hair.

"So he tells me. Repeatedly." Morgan sounded sullen and resentful, as per usual for her.

Carrie glanced over at her. Morgan met her gaze and lifted an eyebrow. "What?"

"You know, you have an awful lot of attitude," Carrie pointed out, "for someone who everyone's just trying to help. Richie didn't have to agree to take you in. Kenshin didn't have to stick his neck out with his friends to _get _you a place to stay. I don't know why you're being so miserable towards everyone."

"I don't deserve any of this." Morgan dropped her brush and her vial of mascara back into her purse and snapped it shut. "You guys don't even know me."

"No, but that doesn't mean we don't want to help." Carrie stopped Morgan from stalking off by resting a hand on her arm. "Morgan ..."

"Let go of me. You don't know what you're talking about. You -- you're little miss perfect, with the perfect little boyfriend who everybody adores. I've heard how people talk about Kenny; they _love _him. I'll _never _have a guy like that look at me the way he looks at you. Trust me, I've tried to get their attention. Nobody ever likes me and I'm always the bad kid, the unpopular kid. So shut the fuck up!"

"Hey!" Carrie said, stung by the anger in Morgan's voice. "Nobody hates you."

"Nobody _likes _me!" Morgan wrenched free of Carrie's grip and hurried back out of the room. She flung herself back into her chair and glared at thin air.

MacLeod rolled his eyes as Carrie walked back to the table. Carrie shook her head. Her urge to smack Morgan was no less. She sat down, sipped the beer, and made a face. It tasted nasty; she didn't think it was the brand so much as the fact that she'd lost interest in being social with anyone and had lost her appetite as well. She drank it anyway, then sighed. "Guys, I'm sorry. I think I'm going to go home. I'm not feeling all that well."

Adam said, "Carrie? A word of advice? That excuse doesn't work on us."

Huh? Belatedly, she realized that 'not feeling well' was a condition no Immortal could ever claim as a little white lie to get out of hanging out with friends. However, before she could say anything, Tammy said in a very sweet voice, "Carrie, he's just hassling you because he's a jerk."

"That's me." He smiled ruefully and saluted her with a mug of beer. "Have a good night, Carrie. Come by again."

-------------------

Kenshin, of course, was far less calm about Carrie's adventures on her own than he had tried to present to Sandy. Only his formidable powers of concentration, honed by a lifetime of discipline, allowed him to finish his diorama. He touched the paint up in a few spots, then rose and headed for the door sometime after 10:00 PM. Sandy was asleep already, covers yanked over his head -- like Kenji before him, Sandy could sleep through the end of the world.

__

He's never had to worry about losing his head in the middle of the night to an assailant, before or after becoming Immortal, Kenshin thought.

It was a nice night -- they'd left the window open and a cool breeze puffed through it. Kenshin pocketed his key card and decided he would wait for Carrie's return outside, at the picnic tables. He could rightly claim insomnia if she objected to him waiting up for her.

However, after making his way outside, he was a little surprised to find Shannon laying on the top of one of the tables. Kenshin approached cautiously, thinking that perhaps Shannon had fallen asleep -- but the young man glanced over at him. "Hey, Kenny."

"Hello, Shannon," Kenshin said, sitting down on a neighboring bench. "It's a lovely night. -- Shannon, I wanted to apologize to you if I caused any trouble between you and your father, on Monday."

"S' okay." Shannon sighed. "You didn't cause the trouble; it's been there for a long time. I'm starting to realize that I love my father, but I don't agree with him on many things."

"Aa. It is possible to love someone you do not see eye to eye with." Kenshin tucked his knee to his chest and wrapped both arms around his leg. "You know that I've been in the shoes of both the child and the father at various times in my life."

"Huh?"

"My shishou -- the man who taught me swordsmanship loved me very much. I didn't realize that, though, until I was an father and had teenagers of my own." Kenshin scratched his nose. "It's funny what an epiphany having some teenage boy scream, 'But we have to _do _something! We can't stand idly by!' at you can cause, when you had said pretty much the same thing to the man who raised you decades before."

Shannon sat up. He repeated, "Huh?"

"Nevermind." Kenshin smiled faintly. Yukio had been every bit as much of a brat as Kenshin himself had been; like Kenshin, Yukio had also had to learn the hard way about life. "What I mean is that I can understand your father's motivations for wanting to raise a child who believes as he does. Mind, I don't _agree _with your father, but I understand that he's acting out of love for you. The thing is -- you don't have to agree with him either. You're twenty one years old, and you don't have to do a thing he tells you to do except that which you chose to do."

"Heh. Easier said than done. He's already told me he'll move me to another school if he doesn't agree with the friends I keep. He told me he thought you were a bad influence."

"You're twenty-one," Kenshin reiterated. "He can't force you to do anything."

Shannon huffed a sigh. "He holds the purse strings, Kenny."

Kenshin was tempted to offer to cover Shannon's expenses. However, he was not wealthy enough to do so without hurting his investments -- and anyway, money alone wouldn't solve this problem. Past experience had taught him that there were better ways to solve things than to just throw money at them. "Loans. A job. Friends, who will back you up and provide moral support. Shannon, you're _not _alone. And you're the RA, that will look great on a financial aid application."

"Yeah, my dad didn't approve of that. But I like helping people."

__

He likes the responsibility, Kenshin knew. Shinya had been the same way -- he had loved to have others relying on him. And he had very seldom let anyone down, at least, not once he'd gotten some life experience behind him. Kenshin said simply, "It's a very good feeling to make a difference for others."

"Yeah. The RA last year was a complete ass. Power mad." Shannon blew a sharp sigh out between his front teeth, which had a tiny gap between them. "Yet at the same time, he didn't take care of things that were important. Like making sure nobody's in the dorm who shouldn't be, or watching out for the girls so nobody hurts them, or keeping Brandon from getting his ass kicked again. He knew those guys were going after Brandon and he didn't do anything. Said he didn't think they'd hurt him that bad."

Kenshin nodded. "He was hurt pretty bad?"

Shannon shuddered. "He's _handicapped_. They beat him up all to hell. He had two black eyes and ended up in the hospital for several days 'cause they kicked him so hard in the gut they hurt his liver. Kenny, it takes a certain kind of malice that I can't even fathom to beat up a guy on crutches. And I don't care if he _does _have a mouth on him that won't quit!"

"Tell me the truth," Kenshin said, with a low chuckle, "I think you actually like Brandon."

Shannon snorted. "I think he's an idiot."

"I'll take that as a yes."

"Okay, okay!" Shannon held his hands up defensively. "I wish I had half his guts, Ken. I don't know how anyone that vulnerable can be that ballsy. And I know he hurts all the time, but he never complains and he rarely even mentions it!"

Kenshin grinned. He would have bet a sizable chunk of money that the reason that Shannon had been brooding on top of a picnic table was a certain blond, blue-eyed 'idiot.'

"What are you smiling about?" Shannon glowered at him.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all." Kenshin hesitated, then said, only a little teasingly, "The light's still on in his room, you know."

Shannon glanced up.

"You really should check on him to see how he and Danny are getting along," Kenshin suggested. "And to make sure he's not having any more trouble from Michael."

Michael was back in the dorm. Both Shannon and Kenshin had expressed disgust that the boy hadn't been kicked out but apparently he had parents with influence. However, he had also been far better behaved. Kenshin figured part of that improved demeanor was Chiyoko's influence, and part of that was the growing -- and not entirely unwelcome -- reputation that he and Carrie were gaining from their workouts in the school's gym. Kenshin was avoiding sparring with anyone but Carrie, but Carrie had cheerfully taken some of the jocks down a few notches after baiting them into some impromptu matches. Since he and Carrie were very publicly Brandon's friends, it should be obvious that he had capable defenders.

"You're giving me an excuse," Shannon said, flatly.

"Yup. He's a good guy; you know that already. I'm betting you don't have many friends you actually like. Be nice to have a few you _do _care for, am I right?" Kenshin stretched both legs out in front of him and propped his elbows on the picnic table behind him. "I don't think he's got all that many friends either, to tell the truth."

"No, his mouth drives them all away." Shannon swung his legs over the edge of the picnic table and stood up.

"There's no crime in just being his friend. And I don't think he runs his mouth that much once he decides he can trust you."

"Hnnh." Shannon waved. "Okay, I'll go talk to him. Guess I can manage a bit of rebellion, hmm?"

"Tell him I said hello," Kenshin said, then watched as Shannon headed for the dorm's lobby door.

Once Shannon went inside he was alone. He could hear a cricket chirping somewhere, and a frog croaking. Fireflies flickered occasionally, and the air smelled like dew and rain, though the sky was clear. He leaned back and stared up at the stars. He was at a higher latitude than Tokyo and the North star was farther above the horizon.

When he felt the buzz of another Immortal, Kenshin straightened up. He expected it was Carrie, and he turned to face the source of the feeling.

A powerfully built man stepped out of the trees. Kenshin's skin crawled. He was alone, in the dark, and it was late. Even had anyone looked out a window from the dorm they would see nothing -- the picnic tables sat in a pool of shadows.

"I am Kenshin Himura," he said, to the stranger.

"Troy Dall," the man replied.

"I am not looking for a Challenge," Kenshin held his hands up.

"Where is the girl?"

__

Carrie. Kenshin wondered how he had known that Carrie was Immortal now, and fairer game for a headhunter. "Not here. And touch Carrie and you will face both my wrath and that of her father, Soujiro Seta - that is, unless she doesn't handle the problem herself."

The man blinked. "I am looking for Morgan Trevor."

__

Huh? The question was so unexpected that Kenshin was left staring stupidly at the man. _What does Morgan have to do with an Immortal?_

"Where is she?" Dall growled.

"Umm." Kenshin stalled. "What do you want with her?"

He couldn't _read _Dall. That left him very wary. Oh, he could sense his Immortality -- but nothing more. To Kenshin, that either indicated someone with a psyche similar to Soujiro's, or someone who was very, very highly trained in swordsmanship. Certain disciplines taught the control of ki. In either case, he would have no warning if this man attacked, and his intentions were also utterly unreadable.

"I've been hired to retrieve her." The man swept his coat back, revealing a katana hanging from his waist.

__

Crap. Kenshin measured the distance between himself and the lobby door. He might be able to make it. He wasn't about to try to take on even an average swordsman without a weapon of his own; that would be stupidly foolish. Since he had nothing to prove and no one to protect, flight seemed to be the smartest option.

He bolted.

He was fast. Faster, than the man chasing him. However, he had to get through the door and that involved swiping his key card against the reader and then pulling it open. He got as far as slapping the card against the little black piece of plastic on the wall. The door lock buzzed. Frantically, he reached for the handle.

The sword whistled in a nasty arc that he sensed at the last moment. He dove aside. The sword glanced off the metal door frame with a shower of sparks. Kenshin tried to keep moving, but the man rammed his shoulder into Kenshin's chest and slammed him up against the wall. His shirt tore, and the skin underneath it split from the force of the blow and the abrasion of the bricks.

__

Can't black out! He thought, struggling to breath. He couldn't get air into his lungs. He'd had his wind knocked out by the force of the blow. It _hurt_.

He kicked out anyway, struggling to get free. Breathing could wait a few moments but he'd die if he didn't get loose! Unfortunately, the strange Immortal was as skilled as Kenshin had feared, and far heavier than he was. The man shoved him suddenly away and swung the sword in a flat, whistling arc. Kenshin ducked, too late. _No! _He thought, believing he was going to die. It was a single thought of protest and denial and disbelief, as much emotion as actual word.

The dull backside of the sword slammed into his head. And then everything went black.


	14. Chapter 14

Kenshin woke with a start, and tried to jerk to his feet, but quickly discovered he was tied up. His hands were bound to his ankles behind him; his back was stretched into an arc. He realized he was naked when cool air whispered across his thighs.

"Kusu!" He hissed. He yanked at the bonds, trying to dislocate his thumbs so he could wrench his hands free. It felt like the man had used duct tape -- and had bound him very tightly. He wasn't going to get loose that way. Perhaps if he could find something sharp ... he thought hard, refusing to panic, and forcing his heart rate and breathing to slow by force of will.

__

I will get out of this, he thought, trying for calm. _There will be an opening, a method of escape, that I can use. I must simply keep my wits about me and wait until the opportunity presents itself._

The buzz of another Immortal washed across senses. He lifted his head and quit struggling as he took one last survey of his surroundings. He was on the floor at the front of a classroom -- _naked_, and Kenshin wondered briefly if this was a nightmare despite the throbbing pain behind his ear that was legacy of one hell of a concussion. If this was a bad dream, however, next the lights would turn on, and there would be thirty giggling students and a horrified teacher staring at him. _With my luck, it would be Mrs. Andrews_. _And she will comment on me being a natural red-head._

His balls tried to contract up inside his body at the mere thought, entirely of their own volition.

He'd taken a hell of a knock to the head; he could feel the blood drying on his cheek. He realized he was a bit loopy, and he abandoned the whimsy as he knew this wasn't a dream. Likely, Dall had broken into a classroom to have some privacy.

__

Why did he tie me up naked?

Kenshin's skin crawled. He had been defenseless once in his life as a small boy. It infuriated him -- and, yes, frightented him -- to be put back into the same position. With rage, he thought, _I can survive anything you throw at me, Dall! There is little in my life that I have not already endured. And survived. And which I could survive again if I needed to._

When the door finally opened he was amber-eyed with anger. He spat out, "What. Do. You. Want?"

"The girl. Tell me where she is." The man had a bundle of objects in his arm that Kenshin couldn't quite see. He did not turn on the lights.

"I'd sooner die," Kenshin growled. "I am oathsworn to protect her."

The man knelt behind him. Course fingers tugged the silver barrette out of Kenshin's hair. Dall ran his hands through Kenshin's red locks, calluses catching and tugging on the fine strands. Kenshin yanked his head away and issued a very un-Rurouni-like oath. Dall grinned, and Kenshin shut his mouth, set his jaw, and fixed him with a defiant stare.

The man purred, "Such pretty hair. You really are a gorgeous man. I've heard of you, of course, but I never expected to find you so unwary as to be outside without a sword."

Kenshin narrowed his eyes and said not a word.

His only warning of what was to come was a prick of cold metal against his hand. Then something clamped down tight onto his index finger. _Jumper cable! _He realized, as the man appeared in front of him, and the heavy wire was thrown across his naked ribs. _Ah, shit. _There might be worse things in life than being seen naked by Mrs. Andrews and her class, he decided. He nearly moaned in anticipation of what he feared would come.

However, it wasn't going to be _that _time-honored method of torture.

Instead, the man grabbed his chin, forced his mouth open, and shoved the other cable inside in one violently efficient move. As soon as the copper touched his tongue his world exploded into pain as the electricity seared into his taste buds. He would have screamed, had he been able to move.

It was probably only seconds but felt like a very long lifetime when the man withdrew the clamp. "Now. Where is she?" He rocked back on his heels. "See, I know about you. You're among the most honorable of us. Even though that bitch doesn't deserve so much as you giving her the time of day, you will defend her to your own death because you _are _sworn to protect the Trevor family. You haven't exactly been subtle about that."

Kenshin spat foul, metallic tasting saliva. His ears were ringing and his lips numb. His tongue hurt; he knew it was burnt. It would hurt more in a minute. Thickly, lisping a bit, he said, "Ish thath how you found me?"

"Oh, yes. When I heard that the girl was a Trevor and had seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet I assumed you were involved. It took a little ... incentive ... to find out where you had moved to, but George Trevor talked eventually ... I never would have thought an old man could be that tough."

Kenshin's growl would have done a mastiff proud. _I will have your head_, he thought, in outraged fury. George! His Georgie-kun, one of the last of the old generation, one of the last who had known Jessica and Kenji, the man who was his great-grandson ... _I will have your head ..._

"The thing is, everyone has a breaking point. Even you, Kenshin Himura. And I am very good at breaking people. It's why they use me for these sorts of things. I've had five hundred years to perfect the art of _making people talk_. Pure luck, of course, that I'll get a Quickening out of this particular assignment -- but you _will _talk first."

Kenshin said in a voice that was nowhere near calm, "You may kill me, but I will not! talk."

"Oh, you'll talk. Nobody will even be in this building until six AM tomorrow, and it's 11 PM now. Seven hours is plenty of time. I bet I won't need more than one ..."

Kenshin had intended not to scream. He did not want to give the man the satisfaction. However, he didn't succeed in keeping silent for more than fifteen minutes.

-------------------

It was sometime past 11:00 when Carrie's bus dropped her off a quarter mile from the dorm. Hands in the pockets of Kenshin's duster, and with his sword a comfortable weight at her side, she headed for home. The campus was dark and empty except for the occasional light on in a room as she passed a few other dorms.

However, as she passed the English building she felt the buzz of two other Immortals wash across her senses. She stopped, startled, and stared at the building. Then she headed for the front door, which appeared to be a little ajar -- when she got closer she could see that someone had busted the lock.

Her father's training took over. _Never leave a fingerprint, or a lock of hair, that they might identify you with._

She had class in this building, so she doubted DNA evidence or a fingerprint on the door could be used against her. However, she wrapped her hand in a fold of the coat anyway before pushing the door open, and she stepped through very cautiously. The hall was lit, but the classrooms were dark and locked.

Someone screamed, the sound muffled by a closed door. Carrie broke into a run, reaching for Kenshin's sword.

----------------

Kenshin sobbed unashamedly as Dall sliced his back with an exacto knife. The man was finding nerves up against his spine and running electric current through them. He couldn't feel his legs from the last round and his back was wrenched into a vice-like spasm so painful he had passed out several times.

"Ready to talk and make it stop? The thing with an Immmortal, Kenshin, is that I can be so much more aggressive than I would be with a human. If you die, you just come back."

"Fuck you," Kenshin growled.

"Oh, we'll get to that eventually. It's actually a rather inefficient method for breaking someone but it is entertaining."

Kenshin sensed another Immortal. Actually, he thought he'd felt one earlier as well, but then he had passed out. _Rescue_, he hoped. When he tried to life his head his abused back muscles seized up so hard that his vision dimmed.

Dall's sword was on top of the desk and he was dimly aware that his torturer had lunged for it just as the door was kicked open. He was having a hard time staying conscious. He'd lost a lot of blood, and he knew he was shocky.

"Kenshin!" Carrie screamed.

He heard swords ringing against swords. He couldn't _see_ and his legs weren't working; he couldn't roll over even to watch. By the footwork he could hear, however, Dall was as good as he had suspected.

"What did you do to Kenshin!" Carrie screamed.

She was outraged. He heard the raw fury in her voice. And she was trained not by a man who had valued peace, as Kaoru's father had, but by Soujiro Seta. Kenshin knew the outcome of this fight even before he heard the meaty _thunk _of a blade against flesh, and the slightly hollow thump of something melon-sized hitting the ground. Desks were knocked aside with crashes and scraping noises as the body fell. Electricity arced through the room. He heard Carrie shout out in shock. Glass exploded out of the windows. A computer monitor burst into flames on the teacher's desk.

Kenshin wanted to cry, for Carrie, who never should have had to take a head. And yet he was utterly relieved that she had come to stop the torture.

__

Georgie-kun ... he thought, with terrible grief. Dead? Alive? He didn't know. _Hurt_, he knew.

After long moments he heard footsteps. "Ken... shin?"

In that moment, she even sounded like Kaoru. Her voice was hesitant and scared and broke in the middle of his name. He sensed her kneeling behind him. The cold steel of his sword pressed against his wrists and the duct tape parted. "Carrie," he said, thickly, "I can't walk. We have to get out of here in case the Quickening attracted attention."

"You're conscious," she breathed. He wondered how bad he looked, to inspire that level of dismay in her voice.

He heard the rustle of fabric and then her hands slid under his shoulders. She wrapped him in his duster. Her hands were gentle, but even so, he nearly lost consciousness as the damage to his back caused more spasms. He clung to awareness desperately, long enough to whisper, "I'm sorry, Carrie. I'm so sorry ..."

"Shh." When she hoisted him aloft she jostled his injuries. Blackness descended instantly, as his mind could simply take no more pain.

--------------

Kenshin was unconscious in her arms. He was heavy; only a lifetime of hard training and the fact that she still had adrenalin surging through her veins allowed her to hoist him and his duster up and head for the exit.

His head lolled against her shoulder, mouth open. Blood drained warm and sticky from his nose and lips, staining her shirt red. He was naked under the duster and she had glimpsed bone through terrible gashes in his back. His fingers were broken and blackened with burns. Both his legs were broken -- shins _hurt _and his had been smashed. He had said, _I can't move my legs _but even had he been able to, he would not have been able to walk away.

She felt filthy. Unclean. The man whose head she had taken had been _vile_. She wanted to vomit, but she didn't have the time to spare.

Her father's training took over: to lose your cool is to lose your head, he had taught her, and reinforced upon her, time after countless time. She forced herself to be calm and to think things through. _Somebody needs to get the body out of the classroom. _She stopped at a park bench, set Kenshin down -- he groaned, but didn't rouse -- and rummaged in the pockets of her duster until she found her cell phone. _Mac_, she thought, _Mac will help! _and she thumbed through the numbers until she found his. He answered on the fifth ring. "Carrie?"

"I killed somebody ..." she gasped out. "At the school. Kenshin's hurt _bad_."

"Immortal? You took a head?"

"Yeah. And I'm not sorry, either. He was torturing Kenshin! Oh, God, Mac, you should see him ..."

"Take care of Ken. Where's the body?" Mac's voice was superbly calm.

She gave him directions to find it. Mac said, "You did the right thing, Carrie. I'll get Adam and we'll clean up this time. Just be careful with Kenshin; if he's been tortured, remember he's not wrapped all that tightly when he's under stress."

"Huh?"

"Don't get hurt if he wakes up fighting," Mac said, more bluntly.

"Kenshin wouldn't hurt me!" She nearly shouted this into the phone.

"If he doesn't recognize you, he very well could," Mac said, voice holding knowledge and warning "Be _careful, _Carrie. I've _seen _Kenshin have flashbacks. He damn near took Danny's head off in one of them."

Grudgingly, she said, "I'll be careful. Besides, I'll heal if he slugs me or something."

"Yes," Mac's voice was very patient, "but then you'll have to deal with the Kenshin-angst. Umm. Make sure his sword's out of reach when he's coming around."

-----------

Sandy answered the door at Carrie's knock; he took one look at them, went deathly pale, and held the door open with his good arm. "What happened?"

"Another Immortal." Carrie staggered through and deposited Kenshin and duster on the bed. He groaned, but didn't really rouse.

"Is he ... God, what happened?" The duster had fallen open to reveal the gruesome extent of Kenshin's injuries.

Carrie tucked the long coat closed around him, gently, averting her eyes from his nakedness. She had never seen a naked man in person; had not wanted this to be her first view of Kenshin. Quietly, she said, "He was tortured. He'll heal, Sandy."

"Umm." Sandy was dressed only in sweat pants, though his chest was strapped with multiple ace bandages.

__

I killed a man tonight. She didn't tell Sandy that; she didn't think he needed to know. And, to her relief, he didn't ask. She didn't think he _wanted _to know.

"Can I help with anything?"

Kenshin groaned, then said indistinctly, "Don't get involved."

"I'm already involved," Sandy pointed out.

"Discuss it in the morning ..." he passed out again, face going slack.

Carrie crawled over him on the mattress. "Sandy, I'm going to stay here tonight, while he heals. He's vulnerable. I'm worried about other people coming after him."

Sandy nodded wordlessly. He sat down on his bed, staring at Kenshin in apparent disbelief. Carrie was unsettled by the expression on Sandy's face. He was a mortal, not part of their world, and she wasn't sure what he was thinking.

Kenshin moved restlessly, groaning. He was trying to rouse himself, she guessed, but not quite succeeding. His eyes were unfocused, and his breath very rapid. He was in shock, she thought.

He whimpered in pain or fear. She wasn't sure which.

The sound nearly broke her heart. Kenshin was the bravest, strongest man she knew -- he should not be crying. She lay down next to him and wrapped one arm across his chest and pulled him against her, careful to be gentle for fear of bumping his injuries.

He grew still, after a moment. Only the rapid rise and fall of his chest told her he still lived and was trying hard to stay aware. "Shh," she whispered. "Let go. I'll stay with you."

If he heard her words, he gave no indication. But she felt the last vestiges of consciousness leave his thin frame again as his muscles relaxed. His breathing slowed.

After a moment, Sandy rose. She watched him, over Kenshin's shoulders. They were both lying on top of Kenshin's blanket; Sandy pulled the coverlet off his own bed and draped it gently over both of them. He said softly, "He trusts you very much, doesn't he?"

She nodded.

Sandy snapped off the light. "I'll see you in the morning, Carrie."

-------------

Kenshin woke to the awareness that he was being pinned down.

He reacted exactly as MacLeod had predicted: he didn't know who or what was holding him down, so he came up fighting as adrenaline and panic gave strength to his still-battered body. He wrenched away from the arm holding him down and then he shoved the body next to him into the wall hard enough to shake the room.

With a muffled shout, the person scrambled away from him. He went in the opposite direction and ended up on his hands and knees on the bed, staring at them. Recognition took a second; he wasn't entirely coherent until the shock of waking up _trapped _had worn off.

Confusion filled Carrie's eyes, for a moment. Her awakening had actually been ruder than his, Kenshin realized belatedly. Then she rubbed her jaw and said, "You know you're naked under that duster?"

He blinked at her, and realized he was feeling a draft. A whole new flavor of embarrassment flooded his cheeks with color. He reached down and held the coat shut with one hand. He stammered, "I'm ... I'm s-sorry, I hit you!"

"Shh." She patted the mattress next to her. "I think I'll live. Mac warned me that you might do that, but honestly, I didn't care."

Kenshin sat back on his heels and stared at her for a long moment, not taking her up on the offer to cuddle at first. She was very lucky he had not had a sharp object close at hand; his first reaction had been to _kill_.

Memory flooded back. Pain, blood, _unable to fight back. _He had truly believed he was going to die, and die brutally, because he would not, could not, break. Dall had been very wrong in his assumption that Kenshin would eventually talk. He knew he never would betray an oath, but he had been so _helpless_. His insides crawled and nausea rose as he realized that he had not been that vulnerable, that _violated, _in over a century and a half.

He wanted to throw up. Instead, he whispered, "Gods, Carrie, if you hadn't come ..."

She patted the mattress. "Come here."

He felt horribly guilty for hitting her, but the lure of her arms was too hard to resist. He crawled back across the mattress to her. She wrapped him in a hug, and tugged the blanket over both of them again. "Shhh. I think Sandy's still asleep."

"Sandy can sleep through anything," Kenshin said, but pitching his voice much lower as he spoke. "Carrie-dono, if you hadn't come I would have died. Horribly."

"I know." She sounded shaken. "I wish I could have gotten there sooner. I'm so sorry, Kenshin. I took your sword and this happened. I'm so _sorry_."

"Carrie," he whispered into the crook of her neck. "it's okay. I let my guard down and that I should not have done. I am very grateful you came and I survived this mistake."

"So am I. I do not ever want to lose you." She tightened her grip until it was almost painful. He heard tears in her voice. How badly had she been frightened, he wondered? _Very_, he decided. And she had taken Dall's head. He knew that Soujiro had trained her to kill because Soujiro's teachings were rather divergent with his own beliefs when it came to how to deal with bad guys.

He wasn't exactly going to grieve over Dall's demise, but he hurt for Carrie, who had been the one to do it, and for something he felt she had lost. Kaoru's idealism had been impractical and unrealistic, but he had _loved _it. He had loved to hear her hopes and dreams. He had reveled in her innocence, and her naivety. Carrie was not Kaoru, and this incident had driven that point home to him very hard.

He wormed his arm free of her grip and stroked her hair. "Shh, Carrie. Shh."

Suddenly she lifted her head up and said, "George Trevor called a few hours ago. He wanted to know if you were okay."

"How badly was he hurt?" Kenshin demanded, remembering with a ferocious stab of guilt that George had been targeted because of him.

"He sounded okay. He said he was getting out of the hospital tomorrow."

Kenshin winced. At least he was alive.. He would call him tomorrow; he had a feeling that George would be terribly guilty about telling Dall where he was, though he did not blame George. Dall had been brutal and ruthless. He only hoped that George had talked before he had been too badly hurt.

Carrie added, "Dall said he was going to kill him. After he talked. George played dead, though -- he pretended to have a heart attack."

"Smart man," Kenshin said.

"Yes." Carrie agreed. "What time is it, anyway?" she asked. Broad daylight streamed through the window.

He lifted his head and glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to nine. They had slept hours past the time his alarm should have gone off. He blinked, then said, "Sandy? You awake?"

Silence. Belatedly, he realized that Sandy was _absent _-- the boy had likely gone to class, leaving them to sleep. Kenshin swore, softly. He could still smell the blood on him and he was pretty sure he was covered in a dried crust of it. He needed a shower, and he was missing class. _Set design, crap_!

He scrambled to his feet with a hiss of dismay and then said, "Carrie, I've got to turn that diorama in today!"

It was the fastest shower of his life. What he really wanted to do was stand under the hot water for hours; both because he still hurt and because a long shower might serve to wash away some of the feelings of violation. He scrubbed himself vigorously, as quickly as possible, then dressed, grabbed his diorama, shoved his laptop into his backpack with his textbooks, and bolted.

He ran flat out, but still arrived ten minutes after the end of class. The teacher was standing outside the room and locking the door.

"Umm, Mrs. Andrews ..." Kenshin said, trying to catch his breath. "I'm s-sorry I missed class. Something came up."

She frowned down at him. "You will have to turn that in Monday, Kenny. I don't have time to take it now."

"But I won't be here Monday!" He protested. "Please, Mrs. Andrews, I've worked all week on this. I am very, very sorry I was late."

"You'll have another absence for missing class on Monday, too. You know that if you miss more than five classes I'll drop your final score a grade." She was now staring at the top of his head, and he could see up her nose. She had hairy nostrils.

He knew she wasn't going to accept his work now. It was unfair and cruel, but she was a petty, mean woman and denying him the ability to turn his assignment in made her feel powerful. "Yes ma'am. I understand. Would you allow a friend of mine to drop it off on Monday?"

She appeared to mull that over, but didn't answer him immediately.

"I have worked very hard, Mrs. Andrews, that I have. I mean no disrespect by missing your class." He bowed his head. "I wish very much to do well and as you can see, I have tried to do the very best job possible on the assignment."

She pulled a pair of reading glasses out of her shirt pocket and peered through them at the diorama. Encouragingly, he held it up. After a moment, she made a disparaging noise and straightened up.

He offered reluctantly, "If necessary I can try to catch a flight back on Sunday. I really do wish to have the best grade possible. Just -- I haven't been to San Francisco in a very long time," _the last time was over a century ago, _"And I'd like to have a little more time to visit."

He gave her his most appealing look, the one with the big amethyst eyes and winsome smile. Softly, he added, "I'm meeting with my girlfriend's father and mother. It's ... it's a big meeting, that it is."

Her eyes narrowed. "You're awfully young for big meetings with parents."

"I'm nineteen," he lied, and gave her his most innocent smile, and cupped a hand behind his head, "and, well, I want them to approve of me. It'd be too hard on Carrie if they didn't." He tried the smile again.

She snorted. "Feh. Put it on my desk. I guess it's easier on both of us." Very grudgingly, she unlocked the door and waited while he carried the diorama inside.

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Andrews," he bowed.

"Feh." She locked the door. Then, in a sour tone of voice that belied the words, she added, "And good luck with her parents."


	15. Chapter 15

Their flight left at five that evening, but they arrived at the gate an hour early. Kenshin sat crosslegged on the ground, a textbook open in his lap and his cell phone to his ear. His hair clip had set off the metal detector; he'd taken it out and in putting it back in blind, without a mirror, he had left his hair delightfully messy. He was one of the few people Carrie knew who looked sexiest when his hair was tangled and half-wild.

Carrie watched, listening absently, as he talked to George Trevor. Visions of Kenshin with his hair down danced in her mind's eye -- she'd caught him a few times, either just out of the shower, or in the evening before bed, with his hair loose. She had suggested once that he wear it down, however, and he'd reacted as if she'd suggested going for a stroll wearing nothing but his boxers.

"Georgie-kun, it is okay ..." Kenshin's voice was gentle, encouraging. "George, I am fine. I wish this had not happened."

She couldn't hear George's side of the conversation, but Kenshin's eyes softened even more as he was talking. She loved the color of his eyes; Meg had recently had the temerity to ask if he wore contacts and Kenshin had been deeply amused by the question. Later, he confided that it was only in the modern era that his eyes -- and his hair -- were considered attractive. He had been considered freakish and strange in appearance by many people in his own time and country.

He continued, "Aa, George, that is true. Very well, then. I wish you a speedy recovery and I hope to see you over the winter break. Promise you will take it easy and listen to your nurses?"

Whatever George said made Kenshin snicker. "Georgie-kun, I am shocked by that statement, that I am. Very well. I shall call you tomorrow."

Kenshin snapped his cell phone shut and tucked it into a pocket on his backpack. His smile turned wistful. "George reminds me that protecting Morgan is his responsibility too, as he is the patriarch of the Trevors as Viscount Trevor. He says I should not feel guilty for what happened to him."

"That is true. Yet you still feel bad about it, for that is who you are." She sat down next to him. She wanted to talk to him about what had happened, but they were in public. Even if they switched to Japanese there was always the possibility of someone overhearing her say something like, _Kenshin, when is it okay to kill? I thought I would never want to kill anyone, but Dall needed to be stopped from hurting anyone else._

He slipped his hand into hers. She was a little surprised that he would be so affectionate in public -- but when she glanced over at him she saw the deep lines of strain on his face and realized he was reaching out to her for comfort. She felt weirdly honored by that. He leaned back against the wall behind him, eyes closing. He looked exhausted; he had been terribly injured and even for an Immortal, healing wasn't instantaneous.

After several moments he let go of her fingers and turned his attention back to the English textbook in his lap. She looked over his shoulder to learn that he was reading _The Monkey's Paw. _His lips moved as he read, and he was tracing the words with his finger. He stopped and frowned at a word, index finger touching it. "Carrie, what's rubicund?"

"Umm, like red faced and round, I think," she said. "It's not a word you'd ever use in a conversation."

"Thanks," he murmured. After another moment he asked, "What's an antimacassar ...?"

"Haven't a foggy."

He sighed and pulled a small dictionary out of his backpack. It was well-worn; he had been required to turn to it frequently in the last week when dealing with English-language textbooks. After fifteen minutes of reading he retrieved his laptop and started typing up the homework assignment that his English teacher had given him.

"Don't you have any homework?" He asked, after a moment, an absent question. There wasn't any censor in his question, just curiosity and a desire for small talk.

"Yeah, I'll work on it on the plane. I hate taking off; makes me nervous. I'm too wired to concentrate until we're in the air."

"_You _hate takeoffs?" Kenshin looked up from his work and lifted an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, Gods, Kenshin, I forgot. I'm sorry." The runway where Atsuko had died was visible through a glass wall across the concourse from them.

He reached a hand out and squeezed her fingers. "It is okay, Carrie-dono. The odds of me ever being in another air crash are very low. Flying is safer than driving. The reminder does bother me, however, I will admit. I have memories that surface and will not go away when I fly."

Carrie put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed him in a one-armed hug. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

They sat together in companionable silence for quite awhile longer with the only noise being his steady typing. After another thirty minutes he handed the laptop to her. "Will you proofread this essay for me? I am supposed to write a five hundred word essay about the theme behind the story. You have read the story, yes?"

"Every other year since fourth grade, I think." She scanned his essay. She was unsurprised to find that he had a very organized writing style, and that he had grasped, analyzed, and intelligently discussed the theme of the story in a very efficient manner. He even made a few points she would not have thought of. However, his spelling sucked. He had used the spellchecker, but there were a number of homonym errors. His punctuation wasn't much better and his grammar was shaky.

Pretty much, the essay resembled his e-mail and ICQ conversations with her as far as writing ability went. There were no surprises in what she found. She chewed on her lip as she made corrections. He watched over her shoulder then said, sadly, after a moment, "I'm not very good at this, am I?"

"It's a very intelligent essay, but you need more practice with the mechanics," she said, carefully. "I'll help. It's not nearly as hard as mastering Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu, I'm sure."

He smiled gently and said, with evident amusement, "Thank you for putting my college aspirations into perspective, Carrie-dono."

----------------------

Carrie took the window seat on the flight. She was briefly envious of Kenshin's lack of height; he fit easily into the middle seat. Then her envy turned to vague annoyance when a woman with a baby claimed the aisle seat.

Kenshin's eyes, however, lit up when he saw the child. "Hi!" he wiggled his fingers at the toddler, who was about eighteen months old.

The baby waved back. Kenshin and the baby amused each other by making faces and playing peekaboo while the plane pulled away from the gate and taxied to the runway. This was a side of Kenshin that Carrie had never seen before, but somehow, she wasn't surprised.

After takeoff, it was less than fifteen minutes before the little boy was cheerfully snuggled in Kenshin's lap, contentedly watching a Muppet Show video on his laptop. Carrie didn't even bother to ask why Kenshin had The Muppet Show saved on his hard drive; she knew damn well that the Myojins and the Sagaras back home in Tokyo treated Kenshin as an unpaid babysitter. Watching him now, she suspected he enjoyed the babysitting.

"Do you have a little one of your own?" The boy's mother said, with a rather indulgent smile. She looked to be in her late thirties or forties and was dressed well; she was almost old enough to be Kenshin's mother herself, if Kenshin had really been the age he appeared. Carrie wondered how he did it; most men would have triggered immediate suspicion if they wanted to hold a strange baby. Kenshin had utterly disarmed the woman, however -- his charisma was sometimes unbelievable.

Kenshin shook his head. "None of my own. I have family with children, however. I often watch the little ones for my relatives. I love children, that I do."

The mother smiled. "It's rare to hear a man say that."

"Someday, I hope to have little ones of my own."

Her smile grew wider. "You'll be a good dad."

Carrie had no doubt of that. She wondered, however, if she would be a good _mother_. She didn't know anything about raising children -- in fact, she had never once held a baby. Her father had never allowed her to babysit, even when neighbors inquired about hiring her. Soujiro obviously had no family with young children, and the Sagara side of the family was half a globe away. Therefore, babies remained something of an intimidating mystery to her.

She wondered, however, what it would be like to have a child who was all hers -- adoption, obviously, but still _hers_. It was a concept she found almost impossible to comprehend. It terrified her, in some ways -- she didn't know anything about babies. How would she know if the kid got sick? What if she let her attention lapse, and the baby got hurt, or she dropped her baby, or ... well, she knew there were a thousand hazards for little ones. How could she possibly think of them all?

On the other hand, the thought of loving a child -- having a child call her _mommy, _of having a baby who would snuggle into her arms, and who she could read to and sing songs with and who she could share her favorite TV shows and children's movies, who she could buy toys for, and cute clothes, and who she could simply _love ... _oh, yes. That was appealing.

The kid in Kenshin's arms actually appeared to be dropping off to sleep, thumb in his mouth, eyes drifting shut. His mother reclaimed him and said, with a small smile, "The miracles of Benadryl ..."

Kenshin nodded understanding, though Carrie winced. She'd drugged her baby? Kenshin didn't seem disturbed by this, however. He simple turned The Muppet Show back off, then stared past Carrie, out the window. His eyes were sad.

"Are you okay?" she asked, in soft Japanese.

"I miss children of my own," he admitted, in a low whisper in Japanese, while leaning close to her.

"I can't have any." It felt like a failure, somehow, that she couldn't give him that. She wondered what their biological children would look like, if they could have them.

He folded his arms and bowed his head. He reminded her, "Neither can I. I ... borrow ... children, all the time. The parents think that I am doing them a favor; in truth, I love children, Carrie, and watching little ones gives me great joy. But I want kids of my own again. Someday. If ... if this works out between us, we can adopt."

She chuckled, somewhat uncomfortably. She realized that even if she had misgivings about children, Kenshin was dead certain about what he wanted. "Getting ahead of yourself, are you?"

"I am sorry, Carrie. Perhaps I am." Abashed, he looked away from her.

She felt like she'd kicked a puppy. She folded her fingers around his and said, "If this works out? Yeah. Kids would be a good thing. Someday. Just not yet; I'm only twenty! -- And don't you even _dare _point out I'd probably be married with a few of my own when ..."

"Kaoru was twenty-one when we found Kenji," Kenshin said, with that bright, sweet smile that said he was shamelessly teasing her even if he wasn't letting even a touch of sarcasm into his tone of voice or expression.

She glared, rising to the bait.

His smile turned broader, his eyes more innocent. "Oro?"

She stuck her tongue out.

He said, in a gentle and innocent tone of voice that completely belied his words, "I could teach you some new things to do with that tongue, Carrie-dono."

She made a choking noise and smacked him on top of the head with a rolled up in-flight magazine. "Bad Kenshin! Bad! Bad innuendo!"

"Maa, maa," Kenshin scolded her, as the toddler beside him jerked in surprise at the sudden movements, and his mother glared. His eyes were still twinkling. "The baby's falling asleep!"

--------------

Seven years since he had seen her last had rendered Akane a little greyer, a little thicker through the middle, and with more wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. Kenshin remembered her as a charming little girl who had been more friendly to strangers and to him than to her own loved ones. Given Toshio's rather abusive parenting style he had not been surprised by Akane's rebellion towards her parents and her attempts to get approval and affection from everyone else.

Whatever Carrie's concerns about meeting her parents with him in tow were, she still squealed happily, "Mommy!"

Kenshin walked after her, watching as Akane swept her daughter into a hug. "I've missed you, sweetie!"

"It's only been a week!" Carrie protested.

Akane giggled. She was forty-three and still laughed like a little girl. Kenshin remembered that giggle from as far back as when she had been a toddler fascinated with his hair. "I still miss you, Carrie-bug."

"Mommmm!" Carrie protested. "Don't call me that in front of Kenshin!"

Akane turned to him, eyes lighting up. "Ken-nii. Gods, it is so good to see you."

She hugged him, too, and Kenshin willingly returned the embrace. Akane smelled of tobacco and the same strawberry scented shampoo that her daughter used. She was wearing glasses, which was new, too. "Aa, I am very glad to see you again, Akane. You look well."

She studied him critically, holding him at arm's length. "You look exhausted. What have you been doing? Oh, nevermind. You can tell me about it later, Ken-nii. C'mon." She dropped a hand onto his shoulder and steered him towards baggage claim.

Weirdly, he found Akane's efficient, bossy attitude reminding him of Atsuko. And Akane looked a lot more like Atsuko now too, as she grew older. It was a little disorienting. Kenshin followed obediently, however, then insisted on carrying Carrie's bags as well as his own.

This amused Atsuko, who laughed at him. "You realize she's several inches taller and forty or fifty pounds heavier than you, right Ken-nii?"

Carrie rolled her eyes. "Yes, but he's a gentleman. Right, Kenshin?"

"Aaa," he agreed cheerfully. "Always."

------------

Outside, it was raining. Akane took her fogged glasses off and tucked them away in her handbag as she got into her car, then said, "Soujiro had work, but he'll be home by the time we get there. Sweetie, let Kenshin in the front seat, will you?"

Kenshin had automatically headed for the back seat of Akane's little sedan. Carrie, in response, had reached for the passenger side door. They stared at each other with a bit of confusion.

"I am fine in the back," Kenshin started to protest.

"Nonsense!" Akane said, cheerfully.

Kenshin, with a mental shrug, took the front seat. It wasn't worth arguing over.

"And put your seatbelt on, Carrie," Akane nagged, as Carrie was a little slow to buckle up.

"Moooommm!" Carrie had the belt in her hand as her mother spoke.

"So," Akane said, as she thumbed on the car's heater and flipped on the wipers, "Kenshin, how are you doing?"

He wondered how much he should tell her. It was his inclination to spare women the brutal details; a bit chauvinistic, yes, but it was simply how he was emotionally wired. Carrie saved him from having to make any decisions, however, by saying, "He's fine, mom. Could we stop for food somewhere? I'm starving and I'm sure Kenshin is too. They didn't feed us on that flight."

"Kenshin? Are you hungry?"

Kenshin winced at that, picking up on the fact that Anake had just discredited Carrie's observation. "Aa, I'm starving."

"We'll stop somewhere ... how are you doing?"

"I am good, Akane-dono," he flashed her a smile.

"You look exhausted. Has Carrie been abusing your good nature? Because people do. All the time." Akane chewed on her lip for a moment as she focused on pulling out into traffic. "And I know from personal experience that you will put up with complete crap while smiling and being way too pleasant."

"Akane-dono," he said, after a quick glance over his shoulder at Carrie, who was sulking with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, "I have been enjoying very much the time I spend with Carrie. We have a great deal in common and we like each other."

Akane shot him a keen look. Carrie kicked the back of Kenshin's seat. Kenshin added, "Your daughter is a wonderful young woman, Akane."

"Mmm. Yes, she is." Akane gave him another sideways look. Then, with a bit of mischief lurking in her eyes she asked, "So, Carrie, meet any cute _guys_?"

"Mommmmmmm!"

Kenshin pretended to pout. "The correct response, Carrie-dono, is to mention my name to your mother."

She kicked his seat harder and slapped the top of his head. "Kenshin!"

Akane snickered as Kenshin tried to duck a second slap and couldn't because the seatbelt restricted his movements. Carrie nailed him hard and Kenshin pretended to be knocked silly and protested, "Orooooo!"

"He does have a point, Carrie. Kenshin is a very cute guy." Akane smiled at Kenshin, who "recovered" from Carrie's assault and blinked large, innocent eyes back at her.

"Momm! Kenshin! Ooh! Both of you!"

"You might also mention Brandon," Kenshin added, "and Shannon. And Sandy."

"Three guys? Wow, Carrie." Her mother was teasing her just as much as Kenshin was.

"Four!" Kenshin protested being left out of the count. "Four cute guys!"

"Brandon is _gay_. Sandy's not my type at _all_. And Shannon likes Brandon!" Carrie threw her hands into the air in defeat. Then she slouched in the seat, grumbling under her breath. "Though I'll allow that Brandon is a doll."

Kenshin sobered. Teasing Carrie was fun, but he knew she had distinct limits when it came to being harassed about her attraction to handsome men, and he didn't want to cross them. Fortunately, her mother seemed to think the same thing because she changed the subject. "So Carrie, I figured Kenshin could sleep in your room and you'll take the couch."

"Oh no," Kenshin said, "I will be fine on the couch. I don't want to disturb Carrie from her bedroom, that I don't."

"Nonsense." Akane said, briskly.

Carrie said, sounding a bit unhappy, "I hope you don't mind pink, Kenshin."

Kenshin snorted a laugh, easily translating that statement to be, _My room's girly! _He said, "Some would claim that it's my favorite color, that it is."

"Ah, yes," Akane said. "I do seem to remember Kaoru mentioning that in the letters that my mother had, that I got to read when I was little. Something about a gi?"

"Well," Kenshin hedged, "It started out red. I liked the red. But it faded to a sort of strange pink color. I wasn't exactly wealthy and couldn't afford a new one ..."

---------------

The Seta's house was a rather small, aging Victorian on a narrow, steep street. Kenshin was fascinated to watch Akane park her car on the street -- she put it in park, set the hand brake, then backed this up by taking a conveniently wedge-shaped rock out of the footwell of the back seat and shoving it behind a tire.

The lines of the house were somewhat crooked -- Kenshin wondered if time, shifting ground, or earthquakes had been the cause behind the house's slightly offkilter stance. Still, it was recently painted, and there were pansies in pots out front. Akane led them through the door, revealing a living room that had a worn, outdated rug in a color not fashionable for a decade, and equally tired furniture. However, everything was spotlessly clean and the house smelled of cinnamon.

She continued on into the kitchen, revealing twenty year old appliances from the 90's and a linoleum floor from the 70's and a light fixture from the 50's hanging over a dining table. The light fixture was more "old" than "stylishly antique." Soujiro, who Kenshin had sensed half a block away, looked up from a stack of paperwork as they entered and flashed a smile Kenshin's way.

"Himura-san." He rose, extending his hand to shake. "It's good to see you again."

"I must offer my profoundest apologies, now that both of you are together," Kenshin said, formally, bowing over Soujiro's hand. "I am so very sorry that I did not keep Carrie safe. I accept responsibility for this."

"Baka," Carrie swatted him. "Don't listen to him, Dad, Mom. It wasn't his fault at all."

"Hnnh." Soujiro said, with a genuine smile. "You're only human, Himura-san, and very few Immortals die of old age. Something was going to get her sooner or later. At least you had the forethought necessary to preserve her identity given what she told us happened. It would be difficult to construct another identity that would allow her admission into a good university, as you discovered."

Kenshin opened his mouth to protest that it was _still _his fault when Akane cut in. "Ken-nii, shut up. You didn't screw up. And truth to tell, it's not entirely a bad thing -- Carrie's a good age for it. She'll always be young and beautiful."

"That she will," Kenshin agreed, flashing her a smile.

Carrie scowled at him. He could read her mind: _Don't flirt with me in front of my parents!_

Akane giggled. Soujiro picked up Kenshin's bag and said, "Here, I'll show you to her bedroom and get you settled in."

Carrie started to follow them up the stairs. Akane said, "Carrie, sweetie, I want to talk to you for a minute."

Kenshin exchanged a look with her and Carrie shrugged in response. He wasn't sure what Akane was going to say, but it was clear to him that Akane did not subconsciously consider Carrie an adult and he was afraid it was going to upset her. He wondered if it would be about her behavior towards him. _Treat Ken-nii with more respect, _he guessed, would be the gist of it. Carrie said reluctantly, "Sure, Mom."

-------------------

Carrie's bedroom was at the top of two steep flights of stairs, tucked under the eaves of the house. A single dormer window showed the street beyond. Habitually, he checked out the approach to the room -- the porch roof was a story below him, and there wasn't any easy way for someone to access the window without making enough noise to wake him.

"This house has burglar alarms, too," Soujiro pointed out contacts on the window frame. He had not missed Kenshin's quick survey. "Nobody's getting in without us knowing, Immortal or not."

Kenshin nodded understanding and approval of that precaution. Immortals didn't always play by the rules of the Game; there was always somebody willing to fight dirty. Sending a mortal in after Soujiro to avoid warning him with a buzz would be a logical sneaky move. If the mortal incapacitated him while he was sleeping, the Immortal could take his head at leisure.

He glanced around the room. Carrie's sword hung on the wall ... without the jeweled hilt and sheath. Soujiro's noticed where Kenshin was looking and he said, "Himura-san, I'm sorry. I had the blade put on a new hilt. We needed the money the jewels brought to send Carrie to college. We are not wealthy."

Kenshin snorted. "Souji-san, I am glad you did. Gems are for jewelry, not swords. Hopefully someone else will find joy in them. And, in truth, it looks a lot better now."

Soujiro's shoulders sagged in evident relief. "We were afraid you would be upset, but she wanted so bad to be a doctor. She wants to help people."

"Aa, she does." Kenshin picked the sword up off the wall and held it in his hand, checking the balance with the new hilt. Then he said, "She should start keeping this with her always. Soujiro, so you know, Carrie took a head last night. I had loaned her my sword and I was then attacked. The man was good enough to capture me -- he was torturing me for information about a teen I'm sheltering. I owe your daughter my life. I am sorry, however, that she killed."

"Will you hold it against her?" Soujiro sat down on Carrie's bed -- the coverlet was as pink as had been implied.

"No." Kenshin frowned. "I would have done the same, if our roles had been reversed."

Soujiro smiled faintly. "As would I. Himura-san, are you saying you wild kill now?"

"I haven't, in seven years." Kenshin walked again to the window. "I hope to go a lifetime without ever killing again. But -- I know, now, that sometimes I may have to, because it will be the lesser of two evils. It is still very wrong, however. I am prepared to carry that burden on my soul if I must."

"Aa." Soujiro glanced towards the door. "Are you getting along well with my daughter?"

Kenshin turned to face him. "Your daughter ..." he trailed off. Finally, simply, he said, "Yes. I am."

The man met his eyes. Soujiro, always hard to read, had a faint smile playing across his lips. Kenshin had no idea what he was thinking until Soujiro said softly, "Kenshin-san, you like her, don't you?"

"We have done nothing improper, Soujiro-san." Kenshin said, stiffly and somewhat defensively. "And I will never betray your trust in me, or _her _trust in me. Carrie is certain you will not approve of my interest in her and I will never do anything to come between her and you and Akane."

Soujiro tilted his head to his side considering that. Kenshin expected him to comment on the fact he'd essentially admitted he had the hots for the man's daughter, but Soujiro simply asked, with evident curiosity, "Carrie thinks I would not approve?"

"Aa. She tried to convince me to say nothing, but I will not deceive you: I find your daughter very attractive." Kenshin hoped Soujiro would say something about that just so that he wasn't left wondering. Soujiro was damnably hard to read under the best of circumstances, and at the moment, he was being particularly enigmatic.

Soujiro mused, "I suppose I can see why she believes that I would disapprove. I have never allowed her to date her peers, Himura-san, for many reasons. There are the logistics involved -- I have always been concerned about her being out even with friends after dark, in private places where she might be ambushed. Most of us will not harm a child, but there's always that one idiot who will."

"Aa." Kenshin agreed with that, at least. He'd been paranoid about his own daughters and young men, a century before; his solution had simply been to spy on them with consistent regularity. They had known, and resented it, but they had also both been married to respectable men in the end. While Carrie was growing up in a very different time, Kenshin knew the risks she faced were far worse than anything his kids had ever known. He said, softly, "In your place I would have been similarly worried."

Soujiro nodded. "But mostly I did not want her falling in love with some mortal, ordinary boy. She is Immortal and I knew, even when she was small, that it would take a remarkable man to be her life's mate. Were she to marry some poor ordinary boy who knew nothing of Immortality or our world it could only end in tragedy. Either they would end up separated or one of them dead." Soujiro tucked one knee to his chest and watched Kenshin with calm brown eyes.

Kenshin bowed his head in acknowledgement of that. "She doesn't fully understand that. She can't; she's too young. She has never seen the people she loves die and been helpless to stop it. You are right to worry about this. She doesn't understand how fragile life and love can be."

"I was four years old when my father and mother died," Soujiro mused. "You were about the same, ne?"

Kenshin shook his head. "A little older than that age. Perhaps eight or so. It's difficult to say; I don't know my own birthdate and I was a very small child in size. Hiko estimated that I was eight, at any rate, but others thought more, or less."

Soujiro nodded at that. "The people who took me in -- they were relatives, but they treated me worse than a slave. There was no love from them. You were fortunate, Kenshin, in that you have always had people around you who cared for you when you were young. Am I right in assuming that?"

"Aa, mostly. Even my superiors during the Bakumatsu -- they cared about me, yes, and I knew it." Kenshin sighed. Thinking back he felt only sorrow for the choices those men had been forced to make -- they had needed to send a very talented young boy into war to fight for what they believed in. He knew, because they had made it known, that they had valued him as more than just a living weapon. "I was a slave, briefly, but even then, there were three women who looked out for me like I was their own son, as best they could." Here, he closed his eyes briefly, as memories he could never forget flooded back. "They couldn't protect me from everything but they tried, and that counted for a great deal."

"How alike our lives were, and yet how different." Soujiro mused. "Shishio didn't care about me. I was a useful tool for him, and nothing more. I learned not to trust him. He was ... harsh. He trained me, but there was no love and no affection from him. He was inconsistent, violent, and I feared his temper. He killed people at a whim. I was valuable to him, and so he spared me the worst of his rages, and I tried so hard to please him ... but I think I knew he didn't truly care about me."

"Shishio was a monster," Kenshin said, bluntly. "I am sorry, Soujiro-san."

"Sorry for what? It is the truth. He was a monster, and in more ways than one. I was not the slightest bit sorry that he died, and I'm still not." Soujiro's smile grew ironic. "Kenshin, do you remember the discussion we had in Seacouver?"

"Aa, I do." Kenshin knew what Soujiro was talking about.

"You handed me your sword and told me you trusted me. I very nearly took your head. Do you remember, Kenshin-san? You gaveme your trust and in doing so, you told me that I was _worthy _of your trust. Moreover, you asked me to look out for Akane. And you told me something -- you told me that to love, I first needed to allow myself to become vulnerable. That part of loving was risking being hurt. And you told me it was worth it." Soujiro reached out and stroked one of the stuffed animals on Carrie's bed. "You were right."

"Aa."

"Kenshin, I never thought I'd have a child. But then I stepped into the alley behind my home and there was this little waif wearing only an incredibly dirty diaper and eating cold, ancient pizza out of my garbage can. And she was Immortal and when I looked into her eyes I saw myself at that age. And so help me god, I made her mine." Soujiro rested his chin on his knee and was silent for a moment. "I never thought I'd love anyone like I love Carrie, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. She touched something in me I thought was dead, and brought it back to life. Making her mine _healed _something, and I swear, Kenshin, I never thought I'd sound that sappy, but it's true."

"I understand," Kenshin said, quietly. "Souji, trust me in that I will do nothing to harm Carrie."

Soujiro smiled, faintly. "You love her. I can see it in your eyes."

"Aa." He admitted.

"Kenshin -- my little girl is grown up. She's an adult, whether I like it or not. And now she's going to be looking for boyfriends and, I hope, a husband -- though for a while, I thought it might be girlfriends and a wife, given her opinion of men."

Kenshin snorted. "No, not her."

"Well, you have to admit that by the time she was a senior in high school and still going 'ewww, boys' I was right to wonder ... but no, Marshall _hurt _her, Kenshin." Soujiro, in that instant, was unmistakably angry. His eyes cleared, though, and he continued, "Kenshin, you are utterly trustworthy. You have proved your integrity and your honor time and again. Moreover, you are one of the best swordsmen I have ever seen -- Carrie is good, but she is young, and innocent. She needs someone to watch her back who is neither. And on top of that you are wealthy. Too, you will be willing to adopt children, I believe, and Carrie will be a wonderful mother."

Kenshin blinked at him, startled by what he was hearing. By Soujiro's words, he assumed the man had been thinking this through for awhile.

Soujiro smiled, a real smile. "Kenshin, I would be a complete fool to stand between you and my daughter. If you want her hand, you have my blessing. In truth, I was going to approach you about an arranged marriage between the two of you ..."

Kenshin snorted again, amused at the thought.

"... but I see that may not be necessary."

"I am very honored by this, Soujiro -- however, I recommend that you do not imply to Carrie that you were thinking of arranging things. I suspect she'd take it badly."

"Likely." Soujiro agreed, with a bit of wistful humor. "She's a very modern girl."

-----------------

"What's up, Mom?" Carrie followed her mother into her bedroom.

Akane pulled open her dresser drawer. "Carrie," she said seriously, "You're twenty years old. You're going away to college. I thought you might need this. It's kinda weird, but ... well, here."

She thrust a book into Carrie's hands.

Carrie took one look, turned a brilliant color of scarlet, and screamed, "Mom! Mooooommmm!"

The book was bright yellow. It said, on the cover, in bold black letters, "_Sex for Dummies_."

Akane snickered at her daughter, who was holding the book between two fingers of each hand like the book itself had cooties. "Oh, stop that. You're _twenty_, Carrie. When I was your age, I hadn't been a virgin in seven years."

"I don't, I, ah, umm, Mommmmmmm! I'm a med student! I think I've got the sex ed covered!" Carrie squealed, but kept her voice low. She wasn't sure which would be worse: her father hearing, or Kenshin.

"Look, I know you don't have to worry about the stuff I did, like AIDs or getting pregnant. But there's still stuff in there you should know when you get a boyfriend. Carrie, it's okay for you to have some fun for once and _enjoy _men."

"Mom, I don't think ... umm ... mom!"

"Do you have a boyfriend yet?" Akane asked, curiously, ignoring Carrie's embarrassed jittering. "I know it's only been a week, but I know when I went to college it didn't take me long to find anyone. Granted, I could have found _better _men, but ... well, it was fun while it lasted. Then I met your father and I grew up because I had to, if I wanted him -- but maybe you can find a happy medium between 'fun' and 'growing up.'"

Carrie scratched the back of her head and then flipped the book over. She pretended to be fascinated by the back cover. The painful heat was slowly fading from her cheeks, but she was finding it hard to resist busting out in hysterical giggles.

Akane snickered again -- probably, Carrie thought, at her expression. "Is Kenshin in the way? Because I'm sure he'll back off and let you date guys if you tell him. He's nowhere near as paranoid as your Dad is. He used to stick up for me when my own parents got on my case and called me a bad kid. I think he followed me on some of my dates but he never intervened except that one time when I was sooo drunk ... but anyway."

"Mom, Kenshin's fine. We're getting along great." Carrie looked up at her mother. "I really don't need this."

"I know, I know, you can find most of that information on the internet. Just, Carrie sweetie, I figured it might be easier to read it in a book. Online, you never know who's tracking you. The book's more private. And -- Carrie, I want you to know you can ask me questions, too. I figure you'd get better information from me than from your friends." Akane looked slightly embarrassed as well, but only slightly. "You know that I _was _the 'bad girl' growing up. I do know about this stuff."

"Mom, I am _not _going to talk to you about sex!"

Akane folded her arms. "Well, read the book. And don't listen to your dad, who'd lock you in the highest tower in the farthest corner of the land and make your suitors do three impossible tasks before they could so much as set sight on you if he could. -- So, no boys at all you like? Kenshin mentioned some?"

"They're friends, mom." Carrie took a deep breath. She figured that Kenshin would tell her mother if she didn't, and the teasing from Akane might be less if she 'fessed up. "Mom, I don't ... don't have any plans to date other guys. Really. Kenshin's ... I think I'm falling in love with Kenshin."

Akane sobered, smile slipping from her face. Carrie didn't like that look at all. Her mother had been in a happy, amused mood until she'd admitted to loving Kenshin.

"Mom, I know it's weird, but ..."

Akane sat down on the bed and slid her fingers up under her glasses. She massaged the bridge of her nose and then said, "Carrie, sweetie, you know that every young woman who meets Kenshin ends up with a furious crush on him? Plus quite a few older ones. And men. You should see how the men hit on him ... used to crack me up when I was younger. I was the same way. I adored him. God, I loved him. I used to fantasize about him suddenly realizing I was beautiful and intelligent and desirable. But he didn't. And Carrie -- don't mistake the fact that he's friendly to you, and caring, and approachable with _love _for you. Kenshin is that way to everyone, and it doesn't mean he shares your feelings."

"Mom?" Carrie said, very patiently, but also amused herself now. Her mother had a crush on Kenshin? Who knew. For a moment, she had been afraid that her mother disapproved, but this was simply disbelief on Akane's part. "This isn't just a crush."

"He broke my heart," Akane said, quietly. "I was -- oh, fifteen, maybe sixteen, and he'd gone out to the movies with me and my girlfriends. I convinced myself he'd come with us because he had secret feelings for me, and I tried to kiss him. He very gently pushed me away and said that he was not interested in me like that. Then he bought all of us girls ice cream and acted just like he usually did, which is to say, he was a bit goofy and a lot of fun. And later, he had a long, serious talk with me -- and when he was done, I _knew _he was not romantically interested in me and never would be. Carrie, he's very honest. Ask him how he feels, and he'll tell you, but don't have your heart broken when he does."

"Mom ..."

"Maybe I should have tried harder. I dunno. It worked for Aunt Atsuko -- she never believed him when he said he wasn't interested. She kept pushing and he finally gave in. But I wouldn't recommend that, kiddo. It took her twenty years to win. Only Atsuko would be that stubborn. And she had other boyfriends while she waited." Akane scratched her nose again, pushing her glasses up her face. "Of course, if I had Kenshin I wouldn't have Soujiro. And I wouldn't trade your father for anything. Funny how things work out in the end."

"Mom," Carrie said, with a smile, "You're right in that he's honest."

"Hnnh?" Akane blinked at her daughter.

"I have no doubt how Kenshin feels about me." Drat, she was blushing again. "Mom, he's kissed me. Several times."

"... oh." Akane boggled at Carrie. After a moment she shook her head and said, "Well. That's a bit different."

"I know it's weird. He's, like, family. But he's _not_. It's all complicated. And he's a hundred and forty years older than I am."

"I married a man a century older than me. I rather think the rules are different when the guy's Immortal." Akane cleared her throat. "He really kissed you?"

"Yes, mom. Lips, his, mine, together. Also, for all that he claims not to be very good at talking about emotional issues he's made it pretty clear how he feels. There is _no _doubt in my mind that Kenshin's interested in me romantically. In fact, I'm expecting Dad to throw a fit in about two seconds because Kenshin said he's going to discuss the matter with him, and you, and he'll probably bring it up straightaway because he's not one to beat around the bush when he has something to say."

Akane laughed, a snicker this time rather than a giggle. "Ah, to be a fly on the wall of that discussion."

"Yeah. Dad's going to flip," Akane said, sourly.

"Hardly, given that he told me he wanted to discuss the idea of you _marrying _Kenshin with Kenshin." Akane hid her mouth behind her hand. "Oh, that's too good. I told your father that Kenshin wouldn't possibly go for the idea."

"He _what_?" Carrie shrieked. "He _what_!"

"Calm down. Look at it from his standpoint. Kenshin's wealthy, respectable, honorable, and he would treat you extremely well. My aunt even said he was pretty damn good in bed! Soujiro's from another time, Carrie, and you and I both know he's got some old-fashioned ideas. Mind, he wouldn't _force _you into anything, but he'd definitely apply every bit of persuasive power to convincing you to go along with the idea."

"Atusko said _what_?" Carrie interrupted, deciding that she wasn't even surprised that her father had planned to broach the subject of an arranged marriage with Kenshin. She, too, wished she'd overheard that conversation.

_Marriage with Kenshin_, she thought. _Will that really happen_? It seemed like a distant impossibility. To be his partner for the rest of his life, sharing his life. Could that really be her destiny? She wasn't sure if she liked the idea, or if she was terrified by it.

"Dear, this is Atsuko we're talking about." Akane said, with amusement. "You think she _didn't _brag?"

"I didn't really know her," Carrie pointed out, a bit sadly. "I only met her once."

"Mmm. She was a very good woman, but a bit earthy." Akane shook her head. "Perhaps it's a good thing you never knew her. You would have grown up with Kenshin as your uncle as well, and you're right -- that would be weird. He's not a relative by blood, and she's dead and he's Immortal. I guess it's okay." She frowned at Carrie, and Carrie wondered what the laws were like. She didn't know. Well, given that Kenshin's current identity was Kenny Myojin, a nineteen year old college student who wasn't related to her at all, she supposed the problem was moot.

Honestly, she didn't even want to think about it. There lay all sorts of weirdness.

"Honey, if you can land Kenshin Himura as your husband, you're set for life. I'm all sorts of happy for you." Akane rose from the bed and hugged her, suddenly, squishing the book between them. When she pulled back she tapped the _Sex for Dummies _book and said, "Read this, kiddo. Kenshin's a grown man. I should probably be telling you to be chaste and virginal and all that crap but honestly, it's the twenty-first century and you have a chance to land one of the best men I've ever known as your husband. _Sleep with him_, my dear."

"Mother!" Carrie protested, turning pink again. She wasn't about to _trap _Kenshin into anything by playing on his emotions, aside from the fact that she couldn't quite believe she was having this particular conversation with her mother.

"Kenshin," Akane said, sternly, "Is one of those men who take such things very seriously. And anyway, it's probably a good thing if he's your first -- he knows what the fuck he's doing, pun fully intended. Unlike me. _My _first attempted lover was so inept he missed, bent it in half, and he ended up in the emergency room and by the time he was better we'd broken up ..."

"MOTHER!" Carrie clapped her hands over her ears, book tucked in the crook of one arm. "Enough with the sharing! I'm going to bed now!"

Face flaming, and more than a little annoyed she ran for the living room couch, where her mother had already put out a blanket and pillows. She shoved the book into her suitcase then dove face-first onto the couch, yanked the covers over her head, and resolved not to emerge until she was old and grey.


	16. Chapter 16

Author's note: Chibi Kitty aka Mickey/McGuffin is a real cat, and he's sitting in my lap as I write this, though he's not nearly as fond of strangers as he is in the scene that follows. Actually, visitors are lucky if they see him at all -- I think he's finally accepted Beedoo!'s occasional presence after several months of regular visits!

---------------------

_Hands on his shoulders, holding him down. A heavy weight, a person -- he couldn't breath, his face was mashed into their chest. He could feel his ribs bending, under their weight ..._

Kenshin woke with a start and a yell, heart pounding wildly in his chest. He was on his feet with flight and fight both in mind before he realized it had been a terrible dream. He didn't have that nightmare very often. Generally, something had to happen to trigger it. It took him no imagination at all to figure out what the trigger had been _this _time.

_Thank you, Dall. It's been at least seven years since I've relived that night so long ago. _He had never experienced pain like he had two nights ago; Dall had been an expert. The torture had been a brutal violation that he was trying very hard to forget and not, quite, succeeding -- until he was in Carrie's presence. Carrie was significantly distracting enough that he didn't think of much else besides her when she was around.

Atsuko's death had triggered the dream, the last time -- feelings of _helplessness _triggered the dream, more often than not. He had been unable to save her, and he had broken his vow never to kill, all in the course of a few short days. _Helpless _had defined his feelings. After her death, the nightmare had come again and again for months until gradually it had faded away. Time had helped, more than anything else.

His pulse was still racing, and sweat-soaked bangs hung down in his face. Shivering a bit in the cool air of the attic room Kenshin dug a long-sleeved t-shirt out of his suitcase and pulled it on. He was wearing sweat pants already.

Barefoot, he padded as silently as was possible downstairs. The floor creaked occasionally underfoot. On the second floor landing he sensed Soujiro wake; he said, very low, in Japanese, before Soujiro could grow wary, "It's just me. I'm sorry to wake you."

Soujiro asked, equally low, through his bedroom door, "Do you need anything, Ken-san?"

"No, Souji-san. I'm just going outside for a bit." As agitated as his ki was at the moment, Soujiro had likely been concerned something was wrong.

Soujiro mumbled something and went back to sleep. Kenshin would only have been surprised if Soujiro hadn't woken; he regretted disturbing him but he needed to get outside into the open air. He was feeling claustrophobic.

Carrie didn't stir as he walked into the living room. This, too, was not unexpected. It would take more time for her to develop battle-honed reflexes.

He paused for a moment to watch her slumber on the couch. Like Kaoru, she braided her hair to sleep. Unlike Kaoru, her hair made a fat, stiff, wrist-thick mass rather than an elegant tail. Kaoru's hair had been longer than Kenshin's own when she let it down. However, he had not realized how truly lengthy Carrie's hair was until he had watched her comb it out one day -- the tightly curled strands could be stretched out waist length. They sprang back to brush the middle of her back when she released them.

He loved her hair in either form. Those curls were adorable, much as she cursed them. He ached to draw his fingers through that hair but he hadn't quite dared yet.

In sleep, she looked innocent. She was snoring very slightly, one arm tucked to her chest, the other trailing over the edge of the couch. In truth, she wasn't far from how innocent she appeared. If Dall's Quickening had tainted her she was showing no signs of it.

He calmed, looking at her. _Would that I can help you keep that wonderful innocence. Perhaps it is so core to your soul that not even the hell that is Immortality can take that purity from you._

After a moment's more contemplation, he slipped out the house's back door. The Setas had a deck overlooking a steeply sloped, very narrow back yard. A glance at his watch confirmed it was past four AM, and on this damp Saturday morning everything was still and silent except for a distant and muffled barking dog.

He sat down on the deck's stairs. The lights of the neighbor's houses glowed faintly through thick fog.

He let his mind wander, remembering the past -- Kaoru, the children, before them Tomoe, after them Atsuko. Years of bloodshed and sorrow, and many times where he had been wonderfully content. There had been decades where the focus of his life had been helping the children he had sworn to protect -- Yahiko's and Sano's descendents, plus his own family. The Trevors' and Himuras' enormous brood that had grown larger with every year.

Morgan Trevor, descended from Kenji, was his distant descendent. It was weird to think that she was his great-grand-something via Kenji's adoption yet he had never seen her before last week. He was one man and it was almost impossible to keep track of all of them, even as much as he wished he could. And with the decision to not tell Morgan's grandparents what he was, he had been limited on what contact he _could _have with her.

_I should get to know her better_, he resolved. _She is one of my own. She is Kenji's flesh and blood. _

He was still mulling over the strange twists and turns his fate had led when he realized that he could see the Seta's back fence. Dawn had come stealthily, muffled by the fog.

A muscular orange tomcat hopped the fence as he watched and then picked its way up a tidy path between beds of neatly tended flowers. The cat cut across a raised box of dew covered nasturtiums, shook what appeared to be overly large feet in distaste, then, with tail raised, approached him.

"Prrip!" said the cat, in cheerful greeting.

"Hello, kitty," Kenshin held his hand out for the cat to sniff.

The cat had huge golden eyes to match his enormous feet. He rubbed against Kenshin's hand and then, without further ado, jumped into Kenshin's lap, planted his forepaws on Kenshin's shoulder, and rubbed his cheek against Kenshin's jaw. The cat was purring loudly, and, when Kenshin curiously caught one foot and had a look at it, he saw the cat had extra digits. The cat didn't protest this; he kneaded Kenshin's hand happily. "You have six toes on every foot, that you do," Kenshin informed the cat.

"Prrip! Prrow!"

"Prrow yourself," Kenshin said, charmed. The cat's thick, short hair was a little damp from the dew and very soft.

"That's Chibi," Carrie said, behind him.

"Good morning," he said, twisting around to face her. The cat _prrippped _a greeting too, and stood in Kenshin's lap and kneaded his thigh. The cat's claw tips were a bit painful; he moved the cat out of his lap and the animal immediately stropped back and forth against his arms and back.

Carrie had on an oversized t-shirt on; he hadn't seen it earlier, because she had been curled under a blanket. It had a unicorn printed on the front and it hung to her knees, almost dress-like in its length. She also had two cups of coffee in her hands and he could have kissed her for the offer of caffeine alone.

"Morning." She sat down next to him and passed him his mug of java. Black, no sugar, and very strong, just like he liked it. He sipped it, savoring the flavor and welcoming the caffeine -- all told, he had not managed more than a few hours sleep. She called it his '_masochistic coffee_,' but he had only had to tell her once what he liked and she had never forgotten.

"Your cat?" he asked. He had seen a litterbox in the bathroom, so he knew the Setas had one.

"Uh-huh." She reached a hand out and scratched the cat's ears. Chibi responded by hopping out of Kenshin's lap and rubbing cheerfully up against her.

He suggested, "You're up early. Do you want to go up to your room and sleep a bit? That couch cannot be comfortable."

"It's okay. I'm not really sleepy and I heard my folk's alarm clock going off so they'll be down in a bit. We don't sleep in around here." She leaned over and rested her head against his shoulder and he put an arm around her waist in response. The cat wove around them, making happy little meows and purring cheerfully. "Are you okay? You're brooding."

"Not really brooding." He shook his head. "I had a bad dream. But now, I'm just ... thinking."

"A bad dream?" She lifted her head and looked up at him. "Want to talk about it?"

He didn't, really. He thought might tell her eventually about what had happened to him, and about why he hated being helpless or vulnerable. It was too soon, though, and he wasn't sure how she would react. It had happened so long ago that he didn't want to dwell on it, or discuss it; it was simply a fact of his life now. And perhaps, in truth, it had happened so very long ago that he did not even need to bring it up with her. Nobody alive knew what had happened except for him. He didn't need anybody's sympathy and he had dealt with it a long time ago -- maybe it was something that was best left unsaid.

He simply squeezed her tighter and said, "I'm fine. The thing with Dall, it stirred up some old memories from a very long time ago. Things I would rather not remember."

She let it go. Instead, she said, "Kenshin, did my father talk to you?"

"Aa."

"My mother said he was planning to ask you about marrying me. About arranging a marriage."

"Do you want that?" He asked, curiously. Kenshin remembered from his own time that there had been many women willing to accept the partners that their families chose for them. Chiyoko, in fact, had been one of them. Her betrothed had been her father's business partner's son; she had seen it as a good opportunity to tie the two families together and had been cheerfully materialistic about the whole agreement. Chiyoko had expected to have a comfortable life as the wife of a wealthy merchant and had been more than happy with that match. Romance had not really been a part of the equation, though she had liked the boy well enough.

Times had changed. Carrie snorted her opinion of that question.

He pretended to be offended. "Well, I'm sorry I'm not _acceptable_."

She giggled. "Would you go for it?"

"Not in the way he intended, no." He scooted over, moving so that he was seated behind her at the top of the steps. He rarely wished he were taller, because, sitting like this put his nose on level with her shoulder blade. But it was still comfortable to wrap his arms around her waist and rest his forehead against her shoulder. Tendrils of hair escaping from her braid whispered against his nose.

"It's too weird an idea," she said, finally.

He wondered if he should be holding her in the way that he was so soon. It was intimate, and this was far more physically affectionate than he normally was with anyone outside of a bedroom. He just wasn't touchy-feely -- he had been raised to believe that public displays of affection were wrong, a belief compounding by his natural reserve and dignity. But this was Carrie, and they were alone, and it just felt _right _to touch her.

The cat wound back and forth against his back, then stood up, paws planted on his shoulder, and purred in his ear, demanding a share in Kenshin's affection.

"Carrie," he said, very seriously, ignoring Chibi for a moment, "If, after a few more months we still feel as we do now -- I would want a marriage. It would not need to be done until after we both graduated, but -- I will give you that promise, and willingly."

She was silent. He couldn't figure out what she was thinking. He rubbed a circle on her stomach with his thumb and added, "If you're not ... not ready for that, I'll wait for you to make a decision. I'm very patient."

"You really feel about me that way?"

"Aa." There was no doubt in his heart. There hadn't been, for the last few days. He enjoyed being with her so much, and he wanted so badly to have her in his life for the rest of his life. "I know it's soon to talk about it, but yes."

How long had it taken him to propose to Kaoru? Two years, he recalled. This wasn't a proposal, just a promise that he would. With Atsuko it had taken twenty years for him to acknowledge he loved her, and another year before he slipped an engagement ring onto her finger. With Carrie ... in truth, he thought, if she asked _him_, he would marry her tomorrow and damn the consequences. He was already making mental notes to go ring shopping.

"What if I meet someone else while you're waiting?" She was testing him, he decided.

"Then I would let you go," Kenshin said. _If he is worthy and if he loves you as much as you love him, I would let you go, Carrie-dono._

"Kenshin, I love you." Her words were calm. "I don't think there could ever be anyone else. I feel like I've known you all my life. You, in my life -- it just feels right."

He nuzzled the back of her neck. "Perhaps this was meant to be."

"Perhaps." She agreed.

The sharp prick of the cat's kneading claws were getting uncomfortable against Kenshin's shoulder. He twisted around, intending to capture the animal. At the last second he realized someone was behind him, looking through the glass of the living room door.

Someone with a camera.

There was a bright flash.

Kenshin said, "Oro!"

Carrie jumped, and cursed, "Shit! Mother!"

The cat bolted, startled by her sudden shout. She started to rise and he caught her around the waist and restrained her. With a disagreeable grumble she settled back next to him. Kenshin put an arm around her waist, and said, "If she wants pictures, let's give her a good one."

"Kenshin!" She protested.

He rose up a bit on his knees and kissed her. He figured if Akane was snapping photographs she wasn't upset, and what the hell -- he had no intention of making this relationship a secret from anyone. He wasn't fond of public displays of affection for both cultural and personal reasons, but the families were going to gossip anyway. There was something to be said for giving them something to gossip _about_.

Her eyes grew wide. She squeaked a protest into his mouth. The expected flash came again.

Grinning, Kenshin let her go.

"Ooh!" She swatted him on the top of the head. "You're dead!"

"Maaa! Maaa!" He pretended to be alarmed. As he ran from her, arms held defensively over his head to ward off her blows, Akane took two more pictures.

"You realize the entire Sagara clan will know about this within an hour, don't you?" She caught him down in the garden and pinned him up against the wall, giggling. He could have gotten loose but he allowed her to hold him.

"Probably!" He snickered.

"They're going to _talk_!"

"Yeah, so?"

"Ooh!" And then she kissed him. If Akane took another photograph, Kenshin didn't even notice.

------------------

"So," Akane said cheerfully, when they finally came inside, "I see my daughter was telling the truth."

"Oro!" Kenshin groaned. With dramatic exaggeration he exclaimed, "Yes! I am hopelessly besotted with your daughter and I believe this means you have complete license to tease me until I die of humiliation, that you do."

Akane giggled. "You two are adorable together. I've never seen Carrie look quite that happy with a guy."

"Maa ..." Kenshin started to protest, seeing Carrie's eyes darken with annoyance at the teasing.

"Mommmm! You've never _seen _me with a guy before!" Carrie shouted at her mother. Then in an obvious effort to change the subject she said, "Can we go out for breakfast?"

"Yeah, yeah, we can go out for breakfast." Akane smiled indulgently at Carrie, not at all ruffled with the shouting.

Kenshin wondered, _Is this what Kaoru would have been like had she not been an orphan? _

The love Carrie had for her parents was obvious, but so was her defiant streak. If Akane kept pushing her, Carrie was truly going to blow up. With a rather dizzying bit of mental gymnastics, he thought, _I'm so glad she wasn't one of mine; I would have killed her before she was even into her teens. _

He blinked. Sometimes, it struck him how very much older he was than Carrie. He wasn't just an 'older man' -- he was a man whose own daughters had grown old and died generations before Carrie had even been born. What the hell was he doing, chasing after a twenty year old college student like he was some lovesick boy?

Akane said, "Go get dressed, Carrie, You're running around in your pajamas like you were two years old. I'm sure Kenshin's delighted by the view but the sooner you're ready to go the sooner we can eat."

"Oh!" Carrie, hands on her hips, glared at her mother. "Kenshin's not perverted like that!"

"Kenshin's a guy, honey. All guys think about is sex. It's the nature of men. Go get dressed."

Carrie shot Kenshin a somewhat embarrassed look, as if she was only now realizing she had been engaging in a bit of horseplay with him while wearing only a sleep shirt and whatever she had on underneath the sleep shirt.

_Underwear or shorts? _Kenshin wondered. Her pajamas hung just above her knees, so he couldn't see.

"Kenshin, tell her." Now Akane was teasing him, as well.

Kenshin ignored that, because there was absolutely no way he could answer the question without embarrassing both himself and Carrie, or lying. With as much dignity as he could muster he said, "I need a shower. If you don't mind I'll get my clothes and toiletries from your room before you change."

She followed him up the stairs, then huffed, as soon as she pushed her bedroom door shut behind her, "My mother is driving me insane. I thought she'd be mad, but it's worse! She's _happy_ about this."

"I am pleased that she approves," Kenshin knelt and rummaged through his suitcase. "It makes life much easier. I like your parents, and I would hate for them to be angry with me, that I would."

He found a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and then, after considering the damply chilly weather outside, a sweatshirt with his new college's logo to pull over the t-shirt. He added underwear and his bag containing his toiletries -- he needed his twice a week shave -- and was fishing a silver clip for his hair out when Carrie rested a hand on his shoulder and asked quietly, "Is it weird, for you?"

"Is what weird?"

"You knew my mother from the time she was born. And now you're dating me."

"I'm used to weirdness, Carrie-dono, because the unusual is a very large part of my life. One learns to adapt." Kenshin glanced back at her. "But if you are asking if sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing with you -- yes, I wonder."

She was silent for a long, long moment. He feared he had offended her, or upset her. But then she squeezed his shoulder and said, "One of the things I love about you is your honesty. The only time you don't tell the truth is when you won't say anything at all."

"I'm glad you value that." He smiled. Then he sat down on the edge of his bed and regarded her more solemnly. "Carrie-dono, I'm going to be truthful with you here, then, and tell you that I am truly wondering sometimes if I have not lost my mind. You are twenty years old, innocent, and very beautiful. Yet everything in my heart says that you are exactly right for me and I pray that you feel the same towards this very old man."

"Kenshin," she said, in a very serious tone of voice. "When I'm a thousand and you're eleven hundred and forty? Do you think the age will matter?"

He had been dead serious, and he went from completely sober to helpless snickering in one breath. Something about her words just struck him as funny; he wasn't sure if she'd meant them to be humorous or not, but she grinned in response to his laughter. He also reached out, caught her around the waist, and pulled her towards him. She knelt so as to be on something approaching eye-level with his seated position, and he moved his hands to her shoulders. "Kenshin, I've never felt like this about anyone. It's like I've known you all my life. Perhaps it's because I knew you most of a past life, and because I talked to you so much online these last several years, I don't know ... but all of a sudden, I can't imagine you _not _in my life."

"Aa." He spread his knees a bit and she shuffled closer and he kissed her and held her close, palms spreading across the small of her back.

Gods, he loved kissing her.

------------------

Akane watched her daughter and Kenshin, a small smile playing around her lips. The two of them were a hundred feet ahead, looking at a display of tourist kitsch at a Chinatown vendor's stall

"She looks happy," Soujiro said.

Akane slipped her fingers into his hand. "She does, Souji. And so does Kenshin."

Kenshin had found a gigantic stuffed Chinese dragon -- it was gaudy and adorable and the size of a Labrador retriever and Carrie squealed when he fished his credit card out of his wallet and handed it to the seller. She hugged the dragon, then hugged Kenshin -- who tolerated the embrace with a surprising amount of enjoyment, to Akane's eyes. She well remembered the Kenshin who had never liked to be touched by anyone over the age of five.

Giggling, she ran back to her parents with the dragon. "Look! Isn't he cute!"

"Adorable," Akane agreed, smiling.

Bouncing with energy, Carrie ran back to Kenshin, who was signing the receipt. She hugged him again, then linked arms with him after he completed the purchase and towed him off to another vendor that was selling jewelry.

"She's happy," Soujiro repeated. He sounded extraordinarily happy and a quite surprised. "I was afraid I would upset her. She is so very happy with him."

"What young woman wouldn't be, with Ken-nii as her boyfriend? Watch Kenshin, though. He never takes his eyes off of her." Akane grinned as she said this, since Kenshin wasn't looking her way. She wasn't about to let him know how vastly she was amused by Kenshin's reaction to her daughter. He had fallen very, very hard -- and Kenshin had never struck her before as the sort of man who would react like that to anyone. Heavens knew it had taken Atsuko long enough to convince him to become more than just a friend.

"Mmm. He's not watching the crowd, though," Soujiro said, with some concern. "He's distracted. I'll have a word with him about that."

"Oh, you worry too much." They were in the middle of a very public street, with a thousand spectators. Akane thought that nobody was going to try anything violent -- Immortals prized secrecy. It wasn't like an Immortal was going to take a Quickening in the middle of a crowded market in Chinatown at noon.

"_You _were able to sneak up on him to get that photograph this morning," Soujiro pointed out. "Had it been someone with bad intentions he could have lost his head, and Carrie with him."

"You are so paranoid sometimes."

"It's kept me alive for a century and a half," Soujiro pointed out, pleasantly. "Still, Himura is perhaps more aware than he is letting on. And I am very pleased by this. He has a very interesting reputation among other Immortals, you realize."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He's got a reputation for messing with the heads of his opponents, and they often end up better -- less evil -- for the experience."

"Speaking from personal history, Souji?" She giggled.

He shrugged and didn't rise to Akane's bait. It was, after all, the truth. "Yes, somewhat. He explained a few things to me that I had never understood before."

Ahead, Carrie caught Kenshin around the waist and tickled him. He shouted in surprise, a vehement, "Oro!" and retaliated by saying something -- Akane didn't catch what -- to Carrie that made her shriek in anger and chase him a dozen feet with her fist upraised. He dodged around a lightpole, grinning, keeping just out of her reach.

"I didn't even know he was ticklish," Akane mused. "I can't think of anyone who ever would have dared to tickle him like that ... And I don't ever think I've seen him that happy. He's always a bit reserved -- but not with Carrie. It's like he lets all his defenses down around her."

"Mmm," Soujiro said. "It is somehow poetic, is it not? He helped both of us, once ..."

"More than once, for me. He never gave up on me." Akane paused, watched Kenshin fend off Carrie's attempts to beat him up him with the stuffed dragon, then repeated, "He never gave up on me."

"... and now he finds Carrie, our daughter. Perhaps this was meant to be." Soujiro nodded contentedly. Then he asked, a bit curiously, "Would you like a dragon too?"

Akane gave him a vaguely appalled look. "Please tell me you're not going to embarrass me in public, Souji."

"Hardly," he said, but with a faintly genuine smile.

-----------------------

It was late. Kenshin stood on the deck, sipping a beer and watching the cat hunt bugs in the grass. Chibi found something crunchy in the vegetation and sat down to eat it.

Carrie was sitting on the deck and _not _drinking a beer -- she had asked for one and been flatly turned down by her father, who had reminded her sternly that she was underage in California. Nobody had apparently remembered Kenshin's legal age. That, or they'd not dared to bring it up.

_I'm sixteen decades and some years old. I can damn well drink if I want to._

"He's probably going to hork that grasshopper up later on my bed," Carrie predicted, as Chibi looked up with legs sticking out on either side of his mouth.

Kenshin observed, "Grasshoppers are considered a delicacy by some cultures. They taste a bit nutty."

"You've eaten a grasshopper?" Carrie squealed.

"I've eaten plenty of unusual things." _Particularly when I was very hungry or traveling in strange places. _Kenshin settled down behind her, legs hanging off the deck on either side of hers, and wrapping his arms around her waist and tugging until he convinced her to lean back against him. The Setas had gone to bed hours ago. They were alone again on the deck. And he was rapidly growing very fond of holding Carrie.

It was scandalous, he was sure. This was completely at odds with anything he'd ever done before in his life -- he had always been reserved and careful in public and even to some extent in private. And yet, it felt so _good _to bask in Carrie's presence. He no longer gave a damn what anyone thought.

She rested her head against his shoulder and he nuzzled her neck. She groaned and said, "Kenshin ..." and then fell quiet.

Greatly daring, he tugged her shirt out from her pants. She sucked in a deep breath and held it; he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Scared, perhaps. He stopped, and she exhaled. Instead of sliding his hands under her shirt as she had intended he ran his hands up her chest with the soft fabric of her shirt between his fingers and her skin. He whispered softly, "You are so beautiful, Carrie ..."

She gasped and lunged away from him, somehow scrambling right over the top of him. She stood several feet away, arms covering her breasts as if she was completely naked. She stared at him, eyes wild, visibly shaken and trembling.

"Carrie-dono, I'm sorry!" He stood up, and stammered in Japanese, "I -- I am very sorry, that I am! Carrie, I thought you would welcome my touch, from the way you were acting all day. I'm _sorry_."

She blinked at him, eyes enormous and brimming with tears now. Then she sobbed and spun away from him and stood staring out at the night.

"Carrie? I didn't mean to upset you. It won't happen again!" God, he'd been so sure she wanted him to -- well, as kids today said, to _make out_. And he had been more than willing, so help him, to do so. Perhaps he should have been more cautious and reserved but she'd been all over him all day and he had assumed she wanted him to touch her.

At the moment, she looked a great deal like Kaoru, too: a Kaoru who was terrified of him.

"Carrie?" It hurt so bad to see her looking at him like that. And he wasn't even sure what he had done, exactly.

"He held me like that." Her voice was so low he could barely hear it. "It's not you, Kenshin. You didn't do anything wrong. It -- the way you were touching me, he did too."

_Marshall, damn him. _"You had a flashback. Carrie, I'm _sorry._ If I had known, I never would have ..." He wanted to hug her, to sooth her by holding her close but he guessed that would be a very bad idea.

She shuddered visibly. "He ... he gave me alcohol, Kenshin. And then he forced me to sit in his lap. He was _hard _-- I could feel it against my butt. And he touched me. On my breasts. He put his hand down the front of my pants, too. And he told me I liked it, and that I'd like it even more if I'd let him make love to me. He -- he showed me _pictures _of kids, you know, like he was trying to prove it was okay while he held me on his lap. But I hated it. I wanted to _kill _him, but I was too drunk to fight back effectively."

"Carrie-dono ..."

"He ... he put a finger up inside me. It _hurt_. Kenshin, I've never told anyone this. I ..."

"I didn't know it had been that bad." Kenshin wanted so very desperately to hug her and let her cry against his shoulder. He was so angry, too. _If I had taken his head a century ago this would never have happened. He hurt Kaoru! -- Carrie! Gods. _He was so flustered he was even getting her name mixed up.

"I'm sorry," she said, hunching her shoulders. "I ... I know you thought I was more innocent than I am. I've been pretending ... pretending nothing happened. I told my parents nothing happened between him and me. I think I told you that, too."

He sighed and sat back down on the edge of the deck. His heart hurt with an almost physical pain. "I knew he'd hurt you, but not the specifics or how bad it had been. Carrie-dono, I am so sorry that happened to you and a good bit of it is my fault. I knew that Marshall was an evil man over a century ago and I let him go. If I had acted then, this would never have happened."

"That's not true. You're not responsible for his actions!"

"Neither are you," he pointed out.

She was silent, shivering, tears tracking down her face. He had wanted to make her groan and squirm with delight in her arms -- to give her a taste of how very good it could be between them. Instead, he'd made her cry. He cursed his own hormones. _This, old man, is why you should have waited much, much longer._

"It's okay, Carrie," he said, with his eyes closed. "I pushed you too far, and I am so sorry."

Footsteps, on the deck, made him look at her. She sat down next to him, shoulder almost brushing his, but her body language was stiff and uncertain. He didn't try to touch her again. She didn't say anything for long moments. Unsure what she was thinking, or how to handle this, he also sat in silence. Finally, she ventured, "Marshall told me I was beautiful too."

"Aa. I imagine he did." Kenshin would have killed Marshall all over again for her, in that moment.

"I hate it when guys notice I'm pretty. I wish I were fat, or ugly. I wish I had zits. I wish I ... I wish they wouldn't notice me. I hate it. I'm afraid they're going to ... to treat me like Marshall did." She wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand. "I ... I love the way you make me feel, Kenshin, but then I feel so guilty about it later. And I don't even know why."

He hazarded a guess, "I'm thinking perhaps that you do not feel worthy. And you are honest, and you do not like feeling like you are somehow misleading me."

She sobbed, once, and nodded. "Maybe."

"Carrie-dono, I knew that Marshall had done some terrible things to you. I took his Quickening. I _knew_. I don't have his memories, exactly, of that, but I have ... impressions. I knew what he was like."

She burst into open tears. "Do you love me because of him? Because you took his Quickening? Is that why you're so interested in me -- because of _him_?"

"Nani? ... Ie! No!" How could she even think that. The thought chilled him to the bone.

Kenshin thought in shock, though he had denied her question outright, _Is she right? Is that why I am so quick to fall so hard for her?_

"Or is it because I remind you of Kaoru?"

"A little of that, yes," Kenshin admitted, while his mind furiously raced over the possibility of her first suggestion. _That could be true, damnit. _Damnit"I would be lying to you if I said that wasn't some of the attraction, Carrie. In fact, I promised Kaoru I would scour the ends of the earth looking for her if she were reborn -- looking for you. And yet I didn't have to search at all."

"Which means you don't love me for me."

"Carrie," he twisted around to sit sideways on the deck, crosslegged, wanting so very badly to touch her but not daring. "Carrie, I said a _little _bit was that you remind me so much of Kaoru. Much of it is who you are -- which is not Kaoru, but a wonderful person all your own. We've had this discussion before, that we have. My position on it hasn't changed. If anything, I see less of Kaoru in you all the time and more of _Carrie_."

She didn't say anything in response to that, but tears tracked down her cheeks and dripped from her chin.

_Marshall liked young girls and boys. Carrie isn't a child. _Kenshin realized this with some relief. He said, gently, in English, "Carrie-dono, sweetheart, look at me."

She met his eyes and hiccupped.

"Marshall wanted you because you were an innocent young girl. He lusted after young teenagers, both men and women. I love you because you are a _woman_, and a very beautiful one, both in how you look and what is in your heart. That is not the same sort of attraction at all, Carrie, as Marshall had for you. And, in fact, one of the reasons I waited so long before proposing to Kaoru -- I waited _two years _after I knew I loved her -- was that she was sixteen when we first met. She had been forced to grow up faster than you had to, Carrie, because of the time and the place and the fact that she was an orphan trying to make a respectable living. But I still felt uneasy about the age difference."

That had only been one reason, and in truth, a minor reason -- but it was one that Carrie needed to hear.

"Look at you _now_." She said, a flash of humor showing through her tears.

He snorted. "Not much I can do about it, is there, now?"

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and shook her head mutely.

"Carrie, it's okay that you got upset." She needed to hear that, too, he thought.

"It's not," she shook her head. "It's just not."

"Carrie, how do you feel about me?" he prompted, gently.

"I ... I love you." She said this through desperately sobs. "I love you so much. I _want _you. I want you in my life always. And when you're this nice to me, when I just reacted like a freak ... I want you so much more but I don't think I can be who you want me to be!"

"Shh." He reached out and caught her hands in his. "You already are who I want you to be."

"But I freaked out!"

"Aa. You did. And I pushed too hard, too soon, for things you are not ready for." He tugged on her hands and she crumpled forward, burying her face against his shoulders. And there, she burst into a complete meltdown; the tears she had been restraining until now welling up. "I'm sorry."

He was older. Wiser. He should have known better, he thought. Her sobs were breaking his heart, and tearing at his soul and he had triggered this.

_Ah Kaoru_, he thought, holding Carrie close. _Would that I could have prevented this from happening to you. _After a moment, he added, "Carrie, you said you want me? You _have _me. You have my heart and soul. The rest -- will come, Carrie, but I am in no particular hurry."


	17. Chapter 17

Carrie watched Kenshin covertly, out of the corner of her eye, as they walked down the Seacouver concourse towards baggage claim to collect their swords plus Falkor the Chinese Dragon Plushie, who had been too big to carry onto the plane with them.

He was quiet -- in truth, he had been subdued since Sunday. She had tried a few times to get him to laugh and roughhouse with her, but Kenshin had been in a very serious mood the entire time. It was starting to worry her. She'd never seen him this moody before; she hadn't known he had such a gloomy side.

She slid her hand into his, and he squeezed her fingers, then let her go.

"Kenshin," she said, "is something bothering you?"

He glanced over at her. His eyes were sad, somehow. "We'll talk later, Carrie."

"You're having second thoughts, aren't you? About us." Her heart felt like it was breaking. She wanted him to like her so badly and she knew she'd screwed up.

"Not exactly. We'll talk, later."

That wasn't very reassuring. She stood in silence, waiting for her dragon and her sword. The swords arrived after a moment, rattling down the conveyor belt in plastic cases. Kenshin handed her sakabatou to her, then slung his sword case over his shoulder. A moment later, Falkor appeared, only a slight amount of dust and a smudge on his wrinkled nose to show for the trip in the belly of a plane.

_Falkor_. Kenshin had suggested the name, and she had squealed with delight, think it perfect. _Neverending Story _had been a DVD that Kenshin had sent her for her fourteenth birthday, along with the book it was based on. She should have been too old for the movie, but had loved it anyway. Meg had teased her, but Kenshin, when she had called him to thank him, had admitted he loved the story himself, and that had made it all better.

After hearing the dragon's name, her mother had started giggling and had reminisced about Kenshin taking her and her cousins and Akane to see Neverending Story when _she _was a child, and that had sobered Carrie a great deal. _He knew my mother when she was young enough to be a little girl watching kiddy movies herself. _

She clutched the dragon to her chest and followed Kenshin out to the waiting line of cabs on the curb. He towed both of their suitcases behind them, and loaded them into the trunk of the cab without a word. It wasn't that he was sullen or angry; he just seemed distant.

Falkor was squished between them in the back of the cab. Kenshin's fingers idly swirled through the toy's thick mane of hair, but he still said nothing. "Ready for school tomorrow?" she ventured.

"Hai. I'm curious to see what grade Mrs. Andrews gave me on the diorama."

"Oh, she'd better give you a good grade. You worked so hard on that!"

"I hope so." He sounded dubious, but didn't venture anything more.

"Do you want to go out to dinner or something tomorrow? My mom gave me some money; we can go dutch, if you want. Make it a date."

"Umm." He hedged. Then he sighed, and nodded, "I'll go."

She felt guilty, after he accepted -- she felt like she'd pressured him into it. _You have me, _he'd said. _You have me, heart and soul._

The question, she wondered, was if he had been talking to her when he said that, or Kaoru? And did his reserved attitude towards her mean he was having second thoughts now?

----------------

Meg was seated crosslegged on the bed when Carrie slipped into her room Monday afternoon after the cab ride home. She was painting her toenails, though an anatomy textbook open on the bed beside her showed she had been at least tacitly studying.

"Hey Meg," Carrie said, setting Falkor and her suitcase down on the bed. She had her sword hanging off her hip, and she thought she had it concealed with a bit of mental trickery -- but Meg would be her first official test case.

Meg didn't even look at the sword, so Carrie assumed that the sword-what-sword? trick was working. Keeping it hidden when it _wasn't _on her was going to be impossible, however, so she simply unhooked it from her belt and laid it on the bed.

Meg blinked and appeared to notice it for the first time. "What's that?"

Carrie said, as nonchalantly as possible, "It's a sword. For sparring with Kenshin."

"You guys are _weird_," Meg said, fanning hand over her toenails to dry them.

"Yeah, well, it's fun." Carrie leaned the blade against the wall -- she'd get hooks to hang it up tomorrow. "Kinda don't mention I have it, would you? It's probably against school rules but it's also worth some money. I don't want to keep it at the dojo."

"Okay," Meg said, dubiously. "So how did it go with Kenny and your folks?"

"My mom," Carrie said, "wants me to sleep with him. She _said _so. My father _adores _him. So I guess it went a lot better than I expected."

"Your father likes him? Wow, the Kenny charm must have worked." Meg knew Soujiro rather well, having been Carrie's friend since second grade.

_You have no idea, _Carrie thought. She wondered if she should tell Meg the truth about her and Kenshin. With the guys knowing, it seemed only fair. On the other hand, she knew exactly how much of a biology geek that Meg was. While she figured that Meg would keep the secret she didn't look forward to Meg treating her like a guinea pig to try to figure Immortality out.

"I like your mom's approach, by the way."

"You would." Carrie snorted.

"So, you gonna do it?" Meg asked.

"Huh?"

"Girl, you _better_."

"Oh, no. Not you too!" Carrie dove onto her bed and buried her face in her pillow. Her cheeks were painfully hot and she wanted to break into hysterical giggles.

Meg snickered. "I would. In a heartbeat. But I see how Kenny looks at you; I haven't a chance."

"I don't know, Meg." Carrie looked up, very seriously. "I ... I hurt him. I didn't mean to, but I did."

Meg asked, curiously, "You mean emotional hurt or physical hurt?"

"Emotional. God, I feel so awful." Carrie sat back up and pulled the dragon into her lap. She hugged the stuffed animal and said very softly, "I never meant to upset him. But I did."

"What happened?" Meg capped her nail polish and set the textbook aside. Her voice was sympathetic, at least for the moment. One of the things Carrie liked about Meg was that she'd call it like she saw it, and Carrie could anticipate her reaction before she even tried to explain.

"I ... he was holding me. Making out, you know ..."

"Way to go, girl! About time."

"Well, I freaked," Carrie said, miserably. "I mean, I completely lost it. You remember when I got kidnapped? It was about that."

"Oh." Meg said. As Carrie could have guessed, Meg sniffed and added, "But that was kindof stupid. Kenny's a really great guy. He adores you. And I don't think he's going to force you to do anything."

The thing was, Carrie actually agreed with Meg. And at least she knew Meg wasn't sugar-coating her words. It was good to hear, she decided, someone confirming what she herself was thinking. Meg wasn't someone who would give you meaningless sympathy; she told you what she _thought_.

"Now he feels all guilty and stuff, I think, and he's having second thoughts about everything," she explained. "Meg, I really like him and I just don't know what to do."

"He's a guy. It's not like guys are all that complicated." Meg flipped a hand casually in the air. "I know you've got issues and stuff, but seriously, Carrie, you need to just deal. Kenny's _awesome _and I've seen how he looks at you. If you screw it up with him I'll be very angry. Also, I may try to snag him for myself."

Carrie sighed and ignored the threat to steal Kenshin away, at least for now. That worried her, but not so much that she was going to get jealous of her best friend. Kenshin's behavior towards Meg had been somewhat odd; he seemed to like her, but he also had a certain wryly amused attitude, as if he didn't take her flirting very seriously. "What do you think I should do?"

"Go get him alone and apologize. And then make out with him again. And this time, don't lose sight of the fact it's Kenny you're kissing and not some sleazy perv."

"I don't know if I can ..."

"Is he worth it? I know you're scared of guys, Carrie, but is he worth conquering that fear?"

"Oh, _yes._" There was no hesitation to her answer.

"Then do it." Meg shrugged. "Step up to the plate and _do _it."

"Umm."

"Look, sex is no big deal," Megumi said, with a casual attitude that Carrie suspected she would never be able to match "If the guy's considerate -- and I figure Kenny should be -- it doesn't hurt, at least, not after the first time or two. And he's a little guy, so it's not like he's gonna be squishing you or anything. And he'll enjoy it and you might too, once you get over the nerves."

Carrie shook her head. "I wasn't even thinking about sex!"

Meg tittered behind one hand. "I bet he is. In fact, I guarantee he is, if he's putting his hands on you."

Carrie blushed.

"Oh, you are so much _fun _sometimes." Meg sighed, and then grew serious. "Really, Carrie, there's more to a relationship than just boinking the guy. But the boinking part is fun and that man -- I bet he'd be damn good. He's not just athletic, but he's sensitive too."

"Meg, stop!" Carrie didn't even want to think about it. But, yet, she did. "Meg, seriously. I came unglued on him. I think I scared him half to death and he didn't deserve that. Now he feels all guilty and he's not _talking _to me."

"He's mad at you?" Meg sounded confused.

Carrie realized she'd walked in the door and immediately started dumping on her friend, and worse, she wasn't even doing a very good job of explaining. On the other hand, there was so much she couldn't tell Meg: _I'm actually a reincarnation of his late wife and neither of us know how to handle that but we _like _each other so very much! _Miserably, she tried to explain, "It's like he's thinking really hard but not sharing his thoughts. I'm afraid he's thinking that I'm crazy, or that I'm not mature enough to be in a relationship with anyone. I don't want his pity. I want him to see me as an adult and I acted like a complete idiot!"

Meg nodded sagely. "So why are you talking to me and not him about it?"

"Because he _won't _talk to me about it," Carrie said, in absolute frustration.

"Mmm. You might try again in a few days. Give him time to think things through." Meg shrugged. "I highly doubt he'll come to a conclusion you won't like; he adores you."

"Maybe," Carrie said, somewhat dubiously. Kenshin's ability to sacrifice for his loved ones worried her; she was concerned that he might decide to 'let her go' even if he loved her, if he felt they weren't right for each other.

---------------

Sandy wasn't in his dorm, but he had left a note taped to Kenshin's computer that he would be at the library until late. Kenshin sat down at his desk and quickly sent him an e-mail thanking him for the heads up; he would have been worried had he not known.

E-mail accomplished he reached for his phone -- now that he was back in town he wanted to talk to MacLeod and Richie in person about Dall, and how Morgan might be connected to Immortals. He knew that there was more to the story than they had been told, but he wasn't entirely sure how to figure out what the secret bits were. Richie's phone rolled over to voice mail, and Amanda answered Mac's. "Yeah, 'sup, Ken?"

"Amanda-dono, good evening," Kenshin said, politely. "Is Mac there?"

"He's downstairs working out. Can I help you?"

"Maybe. Do you know anything about an Immortal named Dall ..."

"Mac and Methos told me Carrie killed him. I'm impressed. And glad. He was a freak." Amanda sounded cheerful about the man's death; Kenshin frowned into the phone as she continued, "He's been a hired hit man for oh, five hundred years. Absolutely no conscience, and he's a brutal bastard. We've crossed paths before."

"Carrie hasn't told me much of what happened, and I was not entirely aware of what was happening, though I'll concede he was brutal." Kenshin's stomach twisted as he remembered just how savage Dall was. He was trying to bury the memories of how violating the torture had been. He'd never been _tortured _before, in his long life. Still, he was a grown man and he had survived worse when he was far younger and more innocent -- he told himself he simply had to deal with it and get on with his life. "Amanda, any idea why he was after Morgan?"

"MacLeod and Joe were talking about that," Amanda said. "We think it may have been a simple coincidence. Dall's been working for organized crime for a long time and your girl saw a hit, right?"

"Right," Kenshin agreed.

"And then he did a bit of research on her family to try to locate her and discovered that you were associated with the Trevors. Logic would dictate that you might have been involved in sheltering her, because you're so damn protective of your family -- oh, Kenshin, you have the most interesting reputation among other Immortals."

"And then he tortured George Trevor to find out where I was. Damn him. -- I talked to George Sunday morning. His grandkids are trying to put him into an old folk's home when he gets out of the hospital. They claim they don't have 'time' for him, damnit all ... He's not ready to go. He's frail, Amanda, and Dall broke a bunch of his fingers, but he's all there in the head." Kenshin's frustration at the situation had been eating at him all day.

"Tough, when the ones you love grow that old."

Kenshin walked to the window and looked outside. Below, at the picnic tables, Brandon was sitting in a spot of sun. His blond hair gleamed in the afternoon sun and he appeared to be reading a book.

"Honestly, Amanda, I'd go move in with him if I wasn't tied up here with Morgan and Carrie. He does need somebody looking after him." He wondered why he was dumping on Amanda, of all people. He hadn't wanted to tell Carrie, because he didn't want her to feel guilty. "He's an independent old man, but at his age anything could happen -- if he takes a fall, or gets sick, somebody does need to be with him. And apparently his grandkids aren't willing to help."

"Kids these days," Amanda said, with a bit of irony. "We can watch out for Carrie if you want to go back."

He hissed between his teeth, almost a swear word. "It's four months until the end of the semester. I'm going to try to hire a housekeeping service for George until then, and play it by ear after that. Maybe Carrie would like to go to college in London, or George might want to come out here."

"You try so hard, Kenshin," Amanda said, sounding truly sympathetic. "You're only one man."

He blew out a sharp sigh. "Yes. -- Amanda, how's Morgan doing?"

"Obnoxious as hell, as usual. That kid seriously needs to be turned over somebody's knee. She was supposed to be working on her schoolwork here yesterday while Richie was at work. All she did was watch television." Amanda snorted. "To have the opportunities this time and place in the world allows for and to just throw them away -- pisses me off, Kenshin."

"Aa." He agreed with that.

"I was born to beggars during the middle ages and I survived by being a thief fifteen hundred years ago, Kenshin. Didn't learn to read for centuries after that. That girl has _no _idea what a difficult life is. She has no grounds for the sullen attitude she presents to everyone. I know she's your family, but Kenshin, I swear to God I want to box her ears."

"Mm. I've thought that she would benefit by learning some martial arts, myself." Kenshin hesitated, then added, "I'm sorry she is being difficult and ungrateful."

He watched through the window as Brandon looked up when a dark-haired boy Kenshin didn't know approached him. Kenshin watched alertly, worried about trouble -- but by the way that Brandon greeted the other young man, Kenshin realized that there was no problem. Brandon caught his wrists and pulled him closer, and turned his face up for a kiss.

Amanda had said something that Kenshin didn't catch, being a bit distracted by the realization that Brandon had a boyfriend. He'd never mentioned the other man. "I'm sorry, Amanda. Could you say that again?"

"I said I'd like to take the flat of a sword to her backside, if we're talking about teaching her martial arts," Amanda repeated.

"Oh." Kenshin sighed. Morgan's behavior really was something that he needed to talk to the others about, and perhaps intervene on. "Are you and Mac going to be around tonight?"

"Yeah, probably. You want to come over?"

"A little bit later, yes. Is eight okay?"

"Sure."

"Thank you, Amanda."

"See you later, Ken."

After he hung up, he watched Brandon for a moment longer -- something just didn't feel right about the scene. The other man returned Brandon's kiss -- but very briefly. He brushed his hand along Brandon's jaw, hugged him quickly with one arm around his shoulders -- and then walked away, apparently after saying something that made Brandon hastily avert his face.

Brandon stared after him, then his shoulders sagged and he stared upwards at the sky, arms folded across his chest. Kenshin thought he looked very alone, and very much like he was hurting.

_I am not good at problems of the heart, _Kenshin thought, with a bit of alarm. He knew from past experience with friends that gay or straight, relationships had remarkably similar issues. He wasn't sure what the -- what, boyfriend? -- had said to Brandon, but his posture was growing more and more upset.

_Guess I go down and say something to him._

When Shannon appeared, Kenshin paused. He would be perfectly willing to admit he felt relieved when Shannon headed for Brandon's position. _Good. Shinya was always better at talking people through problems than any of us. Shannon's a lot like that. He'll do fine, if Brandon needs an ear to talk to. _

_--------------_

Shannon had almost walked past Brandon without a word of acknowledgement, because Brandon looked like he wanted to be alone, but when he glanced over and saw Brandon's face, he stopped, arrested by the expression. Naked, open _hurt _filled Brandon's eyes. Tears trickled down the planes of his face -- absently, Shannon thought that the man had stunningly handsome features. Brandon's jaw-length blond hair framed high, sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, sensual lips, and vivid blue eyes that could go from sparkling laughter to intense thought in a heartbeat.

At the moment, though, Brandon looked like some disaster had befallen him. He didn't notice Shannon's approach until he was only a few feet away. "Hey," Shannon said, getting his attention. "Somebody giving you trouble again?"

Brandon blinked at him, then hastily scrubbed the tears away with the heels of his hands. "I'm fine. I just got dumped."

"Dumped ...?"

"Not really even that. It shouldn't hurt so much, I only went on three dates with the guy." Brandon grabbed his crutches and heaved himself to his feet. "He found out some things about me that I can't change and he couldn't deal with."

"Man, I'm sorry." Shannon wondered if Brandon was talking about his disabilities. He thought if anyone rejected Brandon because he was on crutches, they were _stupid _-- the man was gorgeous anyway, and Shannon personally thought that the way that Brandon managed to somehow be athletic despite the birth defect that had crippled his legs was appealing.

He was nimble on those crutches, and he didn't let anything stop him. Shannon could easily envision Brandon not only riding the bike Sandy had mentioned on the ride to Mason's Creek but wiping out repeatedly -- and picking himself back up and trying again. And falling out of trees, as his brother had alluded to. The guy swam like a fish and had been fearless jumping off the rocks at Mason's Creek. He _wasn't _helpless, or even anyone -- Shannon figured -- to be pitied.

_He's handicapped, sure, but he doesn't let it slow him down. He just finds other ways to get things done. _

He was also very fast on those crutches when he wanted to hurry -- Brandon headed for the dorm, and Shannon found himself practically running to keep up. "Hey! Brandon! Slow down!"

Brandon didn't. "Leave me alone, Shannon. You don't want to hear about this. It'll qualify as too-much-information."

Shannon ran ahead and yanked the dorm door open for him. "Well, then maybe you'd like to hear about the conversation I just had with my dad."

"Maybe later."

"Maybe now." Shannon followed Brandon up the stairs. There was an elevator, but Shannon couldn't remember ever seeing Brandon use it. Hitching himself up the stairs looked a bit awkward, however, Brandon had shoulders like a linebacker and simply muscled himself up them.

"You're pissing me off," Brandon snapped, at the top of the stairs. The bitterness in his voice shocked Shannon. _Yeah, this isn't about being told there won't be a fourth date. It's about the fact that he got rejected. That's got to hurt. _"Go away, leave me alone. I'm not in the mood to put up with you."

"Look, give me five minutes. I want to tell you a few things. Please." _And maybe, if I'm very lucky, you'll like what I'm going to say._

Brandon hesitated.

"C'mon." The Resident Advisor's apartment was the first door on the right. Shannon held the door open.

Brandon slipped through, looked around, then said, "Hnnh. Maybe next year I'll apply for RA. Nice room."

It was a bit bigger than the rest of the rooms, and it had a kitchenette and its own bathroom. As Shannon didn't share with anyone there was room for a queen sized bed, a couch, and a large television with a sound system.

"It's home. -- Brandon, I got in a big fight with my dad this morning. I wanted to tell you why."

Brandon said nothing but his expression was very suspicious and wary.

"Sit down." Shannon gestured at the couch. "You want something to drink? I've got Pepsi, or water ..."

"Water," Brandon said. He wiped at his eyes with his knuckles. "Damnit. I'm sorry, Shannon. If you're looking for a sympathetic ear right now, I'm not it."

"Nah. If I want somebody to talk to, I'd go hunt Kenshin down. And he's part of the reason I got into that fight. He pointed out something to me, and that is, you can love someone without agreeing with them. I haven't been honest with myself, or with him, or with my basically anyone, for a long time." Shannon bent over and dug two bottles of water out of the fridge and handed one to Brandon. "_You _think I'm an idiot, and I'm not sure you're not wrong."

"I think you're an ass, not an idiot," Brandon sniffed. "If you were stupid, you'd have an excuse."

"Yeah, yeah. You're right there, too. Anyway, I told my father I was bisexual and that I wasn't changing my mind about it and that I was going to damn well date guys."

Brandon let out a low whistle. Shannon noted very absently that it was a melodic whistle -- and also that Brandon, now distracted from his anger and pain, looked a whole lot better. He suspected Brandon's reaction had a lot more to do with the number of times he'd been rejected in his life and not so much to do with _this _particular rejection. "And what did he do?"

"He told me he was cutting off my college funding and my allowance and everything, like I figured he'd do." Shannon nodded at a newspaper sitting on his kitchen counter. "I'm already looking for a job. I get a stipend for being RA, but I'd starve if I tried to live on it, so -- job. And I figure I can get financial aid for next semester."

"Man. If you need any help -- a loan, or something -- I've got a little bit set aside. That's terrible."

"Ah, it was coming for a long time."

Brandon nodded. "What inspired you to stand up to him? Besides Kenshin. Who, I might note, I'm growing to like more and more."

"A lot of it was you."

"If this is a rabid declaration of unrequited love, I'm _so _out of here." Brandon frowned. His words were bordering on angry. "You and I have never been friends."

Shannon winced, and then chose his words carefully. "I ... I figured if _you _could stand up to the whole world, as vulnerable as you are, I could damn well tell my old man where to shove it. He's either going to have to accept me as I am, or be short one son. I'm sick of trying to be the boy he wants be to be."

"Rough." Brandon shook his head. "Shannon, I don't know if I could make that choice. I'm glad I've never had to. My parents have always been reasonable, I guess."

"Yeah," Shannon said, morosely. "My mom'll be okay with it, but she's such a mouse. She lets my dad push her around ... anyway."

"What's your next move?" Brandon sipped his water.

"What do you mean?" Shannon said, a bit baffled. "Ball's in his court. I told him he can call me when he's ready to accept me -- the real me. I'm sure as hell not calling _him. _He told me he'd rather have no son than have a gay son. So I guess he has no son."

Clearly, that wasn't what Brandon meant, because he leaned forward on the couch, after quickly shaking his head, said, "I'm sorry about that, Shannon. But -- I mean, you gonna stay in the closet?"

Shannon blew out a sharp breath. He had been dreading that question, to tell the truth. "I ... don't know. I don't even know how to tell people."

"Oh, that's easy," Brandon's voice turned sardonic. "You print up little cards announcing you've decided you like men. Like wedding or birth announcements? Kinkos will give you a good price, or OfficeMax. I recommend rainbow colored ones, with gold lettering. Really swirly lettering. Then make a list of all your friends and family and mail 'em out. They're supposed to send gifts back, y'know."

Shannon snorted in amusement. Brandon, he had discovered, had a wonderfully absurd sense of humor. They'd spent most of the time at Mason's creek discussing the etiology and psychology of swear words, of all improbable things. "I'll be sure to include my father's business associates in that list. And my grandfather."

"Sure, the more the merrier." Brandon leaned back in the couch. "Seriously? Kenshin, Carrie, and my brother already knows. Tell your other friends and leave it at that."

"They'll react about like my dad did. They're all fucking jocks. My dad always pushed me to be buddies with the macho guys, y'know? So I've got 'friends' that make him happy because they're manly boys. And most of 'em are homophobic racist pigs."

"Doesn't sound like you like them much." Brandon drained half his bottle of water, then added,  
"Will you miss them?"

"Yeah, maybe." Shannon wasn't sure.

"Well, you can either stay in the closet or not. It's up to you." Brandon swirled the remaining water around in the bottle. "Me, I've always figured it's best to tell people up front. Then the people who don't care are my friends anyway and I don't _lose _people I thought were my friends later. It hurts a lot more to lose somebody you cared about because they found out something about you they couldn't deal with."

His expression grew closed and still. One of the other things that Shannon liked about Brandon was the way his emotions were always so easily readable. Shannon asked quietly, "Are you okay? You were really upset about the guy you broke up with. I just wanted to let you know you did inspire me to stand up for myself."

Brandon looked up for him, then huffed a sigh. "Yes, I'll be fine. It's not the first time. And getting dropped after three dates and a bit of flirting between classes doesn't truly constitute a 'dump'."

Shannon took a deep breath. He wasn't sure how Brandon would react to what else he wanted to tell him. "Brandon, something else -- I know you think I'm an ass, but I really want to apologize for some of the things I've said to you, about bringing trouble down on your own head. I've been pretty nasty."

The blond man shrugged with one shoulder. "I understand a bit better now. You weren't a bigot like I thought you were initially. You just didn't like me because I made you feel like a coward. Now that you've apologized, I forgive you totally and we'll be best friends forever."

Sometimes, Shannon hated Brandon's snark. Particularly when it was aimed squarely at him. "I'm sorry," he repeated, not rising to the bait through sheer force of will. "I was wrong."

Brandon blew a sigh out. "I'm sorry. And you're at least partly right. I do provoke people."

"No, I had that coming," he admitted. Though it stung, it also felt good to let Brandon tell him off, in a weird sort of way. "Look -- Brandon, can I tell you something? I don't know how you'll take it, but ... well, I realized something else, in that wreck. Life's short, and fragile. I guess -- I guess I realized how much I liked you, and the more I thought about it, and I've been doing a lot of thinking ... the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to _tell _you I liked you."

Brandon was silent. Shannon didn't know if he should take that as a bad sign or an encouraging one.

"I would understand if you didn't want to have anything to do with me."

"What are you saying?" Brandon demanded.

"I'm saying," Shannon admitted, very softly, with his heart pounding in his chest, "that I'd like to go out with you to dinner or something. If you'd give me a chance."

Brandon's eyes narrowed. With real rage he snarled, "Fuck you!" Anger in every line of his body, he pushed himself to his feet, snatched his crutches up, and headed for the door.

"Brandon, wait!" Shannon was stunned by the emotion in Brandon's response. It was almost physically painful; he had thought Brandon might turn him down, but not that harshly.

"I don't even want to hear this, you ass!" Brandon screamed at him.

"Brandon!" Shannon said, wincing at the volume. Now everyone on this end of the dorm knew he was having an argument with Brandon. "I'm sorry! Please ... look, just 'no' would have been sufficient! I won't ask you again! And I'm _sorry _for everything I've said to you in the past!"

The blond man looked over his shoulder, and said with bitter anger, "You wouldn't ask me, if you knew the truth. Kyle found out, and couldn't deal."

"Truth ... what the hell are you talking about?" Shannon said, confused. "Kyle ...?"

"The guy I was dating. The one who looked like you." Brandon slammed his crutch against the floor. "He wasn't you, and if you can't deal -- it's gonna hurt a whole hell of a lot more."

"Deal ... Brandon, I don't know what you're talking about. Do you want to tell me now?" Seized by inspiration, Shannon asked, "You said it yourself -- sometimes it's better to know in advance. Whatever it is, I won't tell anyone." _HIV? _Shannon wondered wildly. _Terminal illness? He was born a girl? _

Brandon stood by the door. "It's probably TMI. Too Much Information. You're gonna regret knowing, and I'm gonna regret telling you."

"I promise, you won't regret it." Shannon took one step towards him. "You can trust me. Please."

Brandon heaved a huge, exaggerated sigh. "Kyle and I -- after the third date, he wanted to take it a bit farther than just a goodnight kiss. And I thought it was getting serious. So I told him I couldn't ... I told him my legs aren't the only thing that doesn't work right, if you know what I mean."

Shannon tried to puzzle that one through. Before he'd completely worked out what Brandon was trying to say, Brandon snapped, "My dick's defective, you idiot. It's from the damage to my spine."

"Uh." Okay, that _did _qualify as too-much-information. Shannon felt an embarrassed blush creep up from his neck and across his cheeks. Brandon had been right in that he really would have preferred not knowing that.

"Kyle decided he didn't want to date anyone who couldn't get an erection or come. Simple as that. Now, I'm going to bed. It's been a very long day." Brandon's expression was now bleak.

"It's only seven-thirty!" It was complete an inane thing to say, and Shannon knew it. However, he put a hand on the door as Brandon was reaching for it, holding it shut.

Brandon sounded downright furious when he said, "Shannon, let me go."

"I'm sorry I forced that out of you. Look -- I'm sorry you can't have sex, too. That's got to be the pits. But -- you don't have to run off pissed off. Please, Brandon ..." He wasn't even sure what he was pleading for. His head was awhirl. _I was born a girl_, he could have dealt with better than this!

Brandon snorted. "I can have sex. I just can't be the top. Know what I mean?"

"Umm ...Viagra?"

"No." Brandon glowered. His tone of voice allowed for no further questions along those lines.

"Umm." Shannon knew his face was as red as a tomato.

Brandon folded his arms. "I'm not a virgin, if you're wondering. I had a boyfriend. We had sex."

"I, umm."

Brandon took a step towards Shannon, eyes narrowing. They stood only inches apart, with Brandon's hands on his crutches on either side of Shannon's hips. "And now you're wondering what's in it for me, aren't you? The poor boy can't orgasm, you're thinking. Why would he want a lover?" Brandon slammed his crutch into the floor harder than he had before, two inches from Shannon's toes. "Why the fuck would he want a lover, if he can't enjoy it?"

"Umm, actually, I hadn't thought that much about it yet." Shannon was wondering if it was possible to die humiliation. 'Too much information' didn't even begin to cover this. He wanted to back up, but the wall was behind him.

"Guess what, Shannon -- I loved it! I loved the feeling of intimacy and of connection. Loved making him come. Got pretty fucking damn good at it, too -- making him come really hard. I loved being _held _and _holding _him. It was wonderful. But it wasn't _good _enough for him." Brandon leaned forward. His face was only a scant inch or two from Shannon's when he snarled, "He _cheated _on me. And then he lied about it. I knew he was, but to verify it, I had to get sneaky. Do you know what it feels like to be so suspicious of someone you love that you have to spy on them? When I caught him with that other asshole, it was a fucking god damned relief!"

"I'm sorry." Shannon's heels bumped against the baseboard as he instinctively tried to move away and couldn't.

"He said he felt like he was using me when he was making love to me! Now, aren't you sorry you asked? Aren't you sorry you know?" Brandon whirled away, suddenly, with a quick hitch of his hips and a swift movement of his crutches. He stared into the middle of the room, and Shannon knew without seeing his face that there were tears tracking down those high, sharp cheekbones again. "Now I can't even dream about you asking me out, because you won't ever. I can't even _pretend_ with you."

Shannon, very hesitantly, rested a hand on Brandon's shoulder. "I ... I don't know what to say."

"Say you'll let me go away and you'll leave me alone. It's gonna hurt even looking at you." Brandon's shoulders hitched and he sobbed audibly. "I'm so tired of people rejecting me."

Had it been a woman crying like that, and in that much emotional pain, Shannon would have hugged her without hesitation. He fluttered his hands in the air, wondering if that would be the appropriate response here. "_Guy" _coupled with _"personal details" _warred with _"he's hurting so bad_," and eventually "_hurting so bad_" won. Shannon put one arm around Brandon's shoulders, and somehow managed to steer him back to the couch where they both crumpled down.

Brandon cried brokenly into Shannon's shoulder, awkwardly folded against him. He smelled of aftershave and shampoo; his hard-muscled upper body didn't feel like a girl at all in Shannon's arms. He couldn't think of anything to say, really, so he just squeezed him tight and rocked back and forth and found himself stroking that beautiful blond hair.

It felt right, to hold him like that.

After long, long minutes, but in a much calmer voice, Brandon sat up. He sniffled, and Shannon reached out and snagged a tissue from the box on a little table at the end of his couch. "Here."

"Thanks." Brandon eyed him, eyes wary again.

"No problem." Shannon, somehow, didn't want to lose the contact between them. He left a hand resting on Brandon's shoulder, thumb swirling little circles.

"So I guess I should write off dreams of romantic dates between the two of us." Brandon heaved a sigh. "Sorry to melt on you."

"I think you needed it. And -- Brandon, were you truly thinking about me that way?" Shannon spoke very hesitantly, a bit surprised by that revelation.

"Yeah. You're an ass, but you're a cute ass." Brandon gave him a very hesitant smile.

Shannon leaned over and kissed him.

Brandon squeaked with surprise, going rigid in Shannon's arms. Shannon, suddenly worried that he'd way overstepped his bounds, started to pull away -- he was acutely conscious of just how much bullying he'd been doing, pulling Brandon into his room against his will, then refusing to let him leave.

_Damn_. _I am an ass. He's right_.

Brandon lifted his hands up and slipped them behind Shannon's head and didn't let Shannon back away. The kiss was amazing; Brandon felt so _right _in his arms.

After _many _moments, Brandon did push back. He smiled shyly through eyes that were still full of tears, and he said, "I'm being an ass to you too, aren't I?"

"We both are." Shannon kissed his forehead.

"Knowing ... knowing this ... about me ... will you ..." Brandon couldn't even complete a question. He looked away, blue eyes downcast.

Shannon slid his fingers Brandon's chin and gently tugged until Brandon met his gaze. "Yes," he said, quietly. "If you'll give me a chance, we can start with dating and see where it goes."

"I won't make a secret of it if we do. You'll be out of the closet," Brandon said, in a warning tone of voice.

Shannon smiled faintly. He wasn't looking forward to dealing with the reaction of his friends, and the inevitable hazing. He nodded, however, and said, "Okay."

Some of the renewed tension faded from Brandon's body. He leaned back against the couch and said quietly, "I should probably go back to my room now."

"You don't have to leave."

"You gonna stop me?"

"No, not anymore. I'm sorry for being a bully." Shannon felt like a heel, for the way he had acted. He thought he really needed to watch that; bossiness towards friends had gotten him into trouble plenty of times before.

"Yeah, you were, a bit." Brandon hesitated, not rising even though he had his hand on his crutches, which were leaning against the couch next to him.

Shannon rose and walked to his desk, where there were a couple of DVDs he had just purchased that day. He held them up for Brandon to see. "I have a couple of movies. Want to watch one with me?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Any preference?"

"Not really." Brandon shrugged.

Shannon picked one at random -- he'd picked the movies up out of a bargain-bin at the mall, earlier. All four appeared to be silly, fluffy comedies. He inserted the movie, turned his TV on, and returned to the couch.

Fifteen minutes into the movie, Brandon leaned over and rested his head against Shannon's shoulder. The movie was horrible, but Shannon decided that the company more than made up for it. Thirty minutes into the movie, Brandon observed, "No offense, but I think I hate the heroes more than the villains."

"Fuck yeah. The director was on crack, I think. And the actors look bored."

For the rest of the movie, with great glee, they mocked it. Shannon laughed so hard his sides hurt, and his jaw ached. Brandon, he learned, was very good at imitating bad acting, with hilarious results.

And somehow, when they put the next movie in -- which proved to be a bit more palatable -- Brandon ended up laying down with his head resting on Shannon's knee while they watched.

_I lost my father. Perhaps forever. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but I couldn't go on lying to myself and everyone else. Life's too short._

He stroked the blond hair of the man snuggled up to him. _I think I made the right decision_, he thought, still amazed that -- somehow -- even though he'd been a jerk and bully -- Brandon had apparently decided to give him a chance. He vowed he wasn't going to screw it up, no matter what. _I'll make this work. He's so worth it. _


	18. Chapter 18

Author's Notes: Next chapter has a bit of lemon in it. I couldn't get around it. :-)

Oh, yes, I am aware that as of right now, extended and crew-cab Chevies only come in automatic. This annoys me in all sorts of ways. If I can write a story about a 160 year old Immortal samurai I can damn well have a stick-shift crew cab in the story too.

-----------------

The dojo was dark and empty when Kenshin arrived at nine; he walked across the echoing space to the elevator and twisted his key in the elevator's lock. He could sense two Immortals upstairs, and the _ki _of at least a couple more people.

Mac had given him the key several years ago; he suspected Mac would never know how much it had actually meant to him. Such trust between Immortals was rare -- and Mac was no fool to give his trust casually. He'd somehow been found worthy of MacLeod's friendship.

And he shuddered to remember those dark days and how close he had come to becoming someone Mac would have called an enemy.

The old, creaky elevator rumbled upwards. At the top, both Mac and Richie were waiting, along with Tammy and Joe.

_Tammy_. Every time he saw her, he felt something of the deep-rooted grief and sorrow and regret in his soul lesson. She was seated at the kitchen table, with Joe in a wheelchair beside her; the two had a huge stack of papers on the table between them. It was healing to see Tomoe reborn, and happy, and living a good life with a man who adored her.

"Kenshin," Tammy said, warmly, rising. The others chorused greetings.

"Adam's not here?" Kenshin asked, a bit surprised to see her and not her husband. Tammy hugged him, and he returned the embrace without hesitation. It was purely platonic between them; he was not the man he had been at fifteen and Tammy's quiet gentleness did not attract him now for anything other than friendship. He suspected she regretted that, but she was happy with Adam, or Methos, or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself now.

"Methos is in London right now," Tammy said. "Something about research, I didn't catch the whole story. -- Amanda's with Morgan, by the way."

"I am so sorry she is being so much trouble," Kenshin said, apologetically. "I did not expect her to be this difficult. I thought she was an innocent in trouble, not ..."

Richie snorted. "That girl's no innocent."

"I am very sorry." Kenshin shook his head. He had so many obligations at the moment, and there was only one of him. "I'll get an apartment, so you do not have to keep her anymore. This was perhaps too much of an imposition on all of you -- she is my responsibility, not yours."

Mac snorted apparent agreement. Richie, however, folded his arms and said, "Nah. I'm not kicking her out, Kenshin. She'll take it as a rejection -- I've _been _there as the teen in trouble. Do you know how much it hurts for someone to tell you that you can't live with them anymore because it's too much trouble? And really, she's not being _that _bad. She's not doing her schoolwork, and I could do without the attitude ..."

"I seem to remember another teenager with attitude," Mac said, mildly, but with a lifted eyebrow at Richie.

"Yeah." Richie agreed, without rising to Mac's bait. "Which is why I'm not entirely holding it against her. But mostly, she sits in her room alone. Though Kenshin -- she's a cutter."

"A what?" Kenshin said, baffled.

Richie mimed drawing a knife over his arm.

"She's looking for attention." MacLeod didn't seem very sympathetic.

Kenshin shook his head, dismayed at what Richie was intimating. Richie elaborated, "I was missing a kitchen knife -- found it in her room. I asked her about it, and she admitted it. Half the girls in the group homes I went to did the same thing, so I'm not all that surprised, but it's more proof that she has some serious problems, Ken."

"Do you think she's suicidal?" Kenshin asked, bluntly.

Richie shrugged. Mac said, "Maybe."

"And she's not doing her schoolwork?"

"Refused, yesterday." Carrie had been spending her days at the dojo, in Mac's loft, while Richie worked.

"Okay." Kenshin glanced around at the three of them. Richie looked worried, MacLeod annoyed, Tammy upset. "After class tomorrow, I'll come by and take her out -- to the mall, I guess, she could probably use more clothes anyway. I'm going to start spending a hell of a lot more time with her. She needs someone, that she does."

_I have homework of my own! _He thought, but did not complain aloud. _And Georgie-kun, I'm so worried about him. And I _want _to spend time with Carrie! _

_---------_

The following morning, Carrie didn't come to his room, so Kenshin, after dressing for class, went looking for her. He found her in the lobby, seated on one of the chairs.

"Carrie-dono?" He asked, wondering why she hadn't come to his room. They didn't have any formal agreement to eat breakfast together but she had done so with him for the last week.

She gave him an unreadable look.

"Are you okay?" He sat down next to her.

"I want to talk to you," she said, quietly. "We need to talk. Do you have time after my classes?"

"I'm sorry," he said, with genuine regret. "I am taking Morgan to the mall. She's having a tough time."

"Can I come?" She said, sounding at least a little bit interested in the prospect.

He considered the request, the put his hand on her arm and said gently, "I am looking for some time alone with Morgan, to try to connect with her. She needs someone to talk to. I am sorry, Carrie-dono. Perhaps another time we three can do something together."

Her face fell. "Oh. I see."

"Maybe you and I can do something together this weekend. And we can talk then."

"That's four days away." She sounded profoundly unhappy about the idea. He wondered if she was jealous about the time he was going to spend with Morgan. Morgan was four years younger than Carrie -- but old enough, potentially, to be a rival. _Never_, Kenshin thought, fervently. It wasn't just that Morgan as jailbait -- she was just not his type, on multiple profound levels.

"Aa." He smiled at her apologetically. "It is. However, Wednesday I agreed to meet with Mac for sparring practice and I have three different tests due Friday, so I will be busy studying Thursday. This weekend, however, I am free, and I would very much like to make time for you, perhaps starting Friday night."

She blinked at him a bit. He couldn't tell what she was thinking and he was still a bit worried about the fact that she had not come to eat breakfast with him.

He suggested tentatively, "I had thought perhaps a drive up the coast. I can rent a car, and ..."

"You're under 25," she pointed out, with a bit of a smirk.

"Et-to." She was right. He wouldn't be able to rent a car, unless he resurrected his identity as Shinta Sagara. "I'll find a way to have the transportation. I might look at vehicles today before I pick Morgan up. This weekend -- it will be just you and I. Before the school year started I found a beautiful hotel in a little community north of here. It has a fantastic view of the ocean. We can rent rooms and spend some time together."

He was laying his heart out for her -- he wondered if she knew how hard it was for him to offer this, this _romance_. He was not an especially romantic man, but he wanted Carrie to know how truly much he valued her.

"Rooms?" she questioned.

"It would be more proper for us to sleep separately." He didn't want her to feel uncomfortable, or threatened. This wasn't about him trying to seduce her; he simply wanted to set aside time just for her.

"Expensive," she murmured.

"I shall pay."

She hesitated and he winced at that hesitation. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that."

He waved his hands in the air. He was a bit at a loss as to what to say. "Okay, then we can stay in town -- we could go to the movies, or there's some art galleries, or whatever you want."

She blinked a bit at him. "Huh?"

"If you're not ready to travel alone with this one, if you do not feel safe, that is understandable. I just thought you might enjoy it ..." He remembered how much Kaoru had loved traveling. She would save for months to be able to afford to take all of them on train trips. He wanted to kill Marshall all over again for what he had done to Carrie.

"It's not that. I'm just not comfortable with making you pay for two rooms." She smiled briefly, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. "Maybe we could only rent one."

"Oh. Umm. Are you not worried about what people might think?" His head spun. He hadn't expected her to suggest that. He wasn't sure what he thought. He had resolved to back off, and, in fact, was no longer comfortable with being in a potentially compromising position with her, simply because he didn't want to upset her. And he didn't know how to handle it. And he had resolved it would be best to err on the side of caution, for the time being.

She rested a hand on his arm. In a very tiny voice she said, "If they think that we love each other, they would not be wrong. Besides, I'm sure the hotel staff as seen it all before."

"No," he murmured, "they wouldn't be wrong -- but I don't want to upset you or make you worry. I would _never _touch you if you didn't want it, but I thought you might feel more secure in your own room."

Carrie squeezed his arm a bit, and said, "I trust you."

He remembered her lunging away from him, terrified beyond reason. He knew there was a huge difference between thinking someone worthy of trust, and actually _trusting_.

She leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. Then she said, "If I'm going to be in a relationship with you, I need to learn to be comfortable with this -- with physical stuff. It's not fair to you, otherwise."

"There wouldn't be any physical stuff." He dropped his voice lower, as there were other students coming down the stairs.

"Even if I wanted it?" She matched his low tone, leaning closer to talk to him. "Kenshin, I think ... I think I want to _get _comfortable with it. Would you help me with that?"

It was a bald, naked request and utterly unexpected. He didn't know what to say, for a long moment.

She bit her lip. "I'm scared to death, Kenshin. I'm scared you'll decide I'm too much trouble ..."

"Gods, never!" The reaction was wrung out of him in shock.

"... and I'm scared I can never conquer this terror. But I'm going to! I swear to you, I'm going to!"

It was so like Kaoru, Kenshin decided, to face her fears head-on and with dogged determination to conquer them. Once she put her mind on a course of action, she was stubborn to the point of being unstoppable. He was uncomfortable, however, with the position this put _him _in. He wasn't so sure _he _was ready for anything beyond dating, now. Her reaction on Saturday night had left him more shaken than he was willing to admit to her. He was both terrified of triggering her fears again, and uncertain if immediately moving into a physical relationship was the best choice.

_I want you to trust me, Carrie-dono_, he thought. _Not just to say it, not just to wish it, but to truly, in your heart, trust me. _

He rested a hand on her arm. "We'll get a room together, then. And we'll talk. And we will have fun, and no worries, and enjoy each other's company for the weekend. That is all I ask, Carrie-dono."

She nodded. "I'm sorry I didn't come to your room this morning. I must have worried you."

"Aa, a little."

"I just ... I feel like ..." she trailed off, and suddenly couldn't meet his eyes. "You've been distant, the last couple of days. I was scared I was pressuring you too much, being the clingy-needy girlfriend."

He huffed a sigh, a bit of an exasperated one. "I have been preoccupied because I am worried about my great-grandson and about Morgan. My mood has little to do with you."

She didn't exactly look convinced by this assurance.

"Come on," he rose, and offered her a hand up. "We've still got time to get breakfast from the cafeteria before class, if we hurry."

-------------

He got a B on his diorama.

Kenshin was stunned by the grade. He'd worked so very hard, worse, other students who had obviously put much less effort into their displays had A's.

"Is something the matter?" the teacher asked, sounding a bit smug. He decided then and there that he didn't really _like _this woman.

"Mrs. Andrews-sensei," he said, flustered, and surprised that she had read any dismay on his face -- and then more upset when he came to the belated conclusion that her question had been sarcastic, and not in response to his expression. "Mrs. Andrews, may I speak to you after class?"

She had the dioramas on a shelf along one wall. _Most _of the other students had gotten A's, even those who had made theirs from cardboard and paper. He'd gone to a craft store and gotten balsa wood, paint, and varnish, and he thought the end result looked very, very good. He stared again at the little paper attached to the display that proclaimed his very hard effort only worthy of a "B."

"If you have any questions you may ask them now," she said, primly. "I don't have time after class."

"May I ask why I only received a B?"

_I haven't had this much desire to yell at a teacher since Hiko. That was an 'A' _effort! His pride and his sense of justice were both sorely wounded by this, even though he was making a firm effort not to whine. He was not thirteen years old, to rail and rant angrily at his teacher over a perceived injustice. He was a grownup. He could handle this.

She squinted through her glasses at him. "There's no furniture. Also, you spent too much effort on the project."

"... too much effort?" He said, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. "Mrs. Andres, it's a dojo! There wouldn't be any furniture! It has tatami and the sword stand and benches along the wall!" Somebody snickered behind him. He averted his eyes to keep from glaring up at her, and in doing so he glanced at the next diorama over. It had been made out of a shoebox and was simply a rather generic living room. It did, indeed, have furniture -- dollhouse furniture that the student had purchased, not made. That seemed like cheating to him. Yet the other student had gotten an 'A'.

"I do not believe that I required you to turn in something that looks like it belongs in a museum."

"You graded me down because I _tried _to hard?" He realized he did, indeed, sound very much like his angry young teenage self from long ago and shut his mouth with a snap. Anything else he said in protest would likely be defiant and very undignified. "Thank you, sensei," he said, finally, "for explaining this."

Somebody giggled.

Back ramrod straight, pride wounded by the 'B' that he knew -- _knew! _-- was not deserved, and by the titters of the other students, he returned to his desk. The teacher said, in what he was certain was a snide tone aimed directly at him, "Does anyone else have any questions about their grade?"

When nobody did, the teacher picked up a dry-erase pen and started writing things on the board about lighting -- terms he had to know. He dutifully took notes, schooling his expression to show nothing of his inner upset. He didn't understand why this teacher didn't like him. He'd tried _so hard_. It wasn't fair!

_------------_

Kenshin had not written his life-history essay for his English teacher. In a tough choice between appearing to be disrespectful to the teacher and lazy and lying about his past, in writing, to the teacher, he chose the former. He had been wholly unable to bring himself to tell the lie. He could fib with the best of them, these days, when protecting himself and his loved ones, but putting it down in writing was somehow very different.

After the class he approached the teacher, and said apologetically, "Mr. Smitty, I am so sorry to tell you that the assignment you gave me an extension on to turn in today is not done."

The man waved a casual hand. "You were out of town. Did you have fun with your girlfriend and her family?"

"Yes, we had a good time, that we did. I will accept the reduction in grade, sir."

The man made that casual, airy wave with one hand again. "Oh, don't worry about it. Can you get it done by tomorrow?"

Kenshin winced. "No, sir. I can't. I am very sorry."

Smitty's eyes were keen. In a very gentle voice he said, "You're having trouble with the language, aren't you? We have ESL help ..."

Kenshin shook his head vigorously. "Some, but Carrie and Sandy and Brandon are all helping me. I've spent quite a bit of time in England, sir."

"Then you can turn the assignment in a little late. I'm easy."

"I ..." Kenshin hesitated a long moment. He confessed, "It's a very tough essay for me to write, sir."

Smitty glanced at Kenshin's face, then down at his arms. Sudden sympathy lit in his eyes. Kenshin didn't understand that look until Smitty reached out and turned Kenshin's hand over. His hands were badly scarred from catching multiple sword strikes in his early years; he had a few broken fingers, too, that were crooked. Mostly, he didn't notice anymore, and mostly, people were too polite to comment, though he knew they sometimes talked about his scars out of his earshot.

Smitty said gently, "Can you write an essay about a single happy memory, then? As a compromise? I don't want to make you relive anything."

Kenshin swallowed, aware that the man had come to the conclusion that he'd had a violent, unhappy childhood and that he didn't want to talk about it. Well, he wasn't far from the truth. He nodded shortly, with a sudden lump in his throat. When he found his voice he said, "Aa. I can do that."

-----------

Mr. Sasaki glanced at the diorama in Kenshin's arms and lifted one eyebrow when Kenshin entered the filmmaking class. "May I see that?"

Kenshin willingly handed it over. The little tag that showed it had gotten a 'B' still fluttered from one corner.

"This is beautiful work ..." He said, in Japanese, as the other students streamed past. He glanced at the tag, and muttered, "I'd like to see what that woman considers an 'A' assignment."

Kenshin bit back several rude responses of his own. "She said she thought I tried too hard."

Sasaki read the name plates Kenshin had stuck to the wall. "Kamiya Dojo -- Kamiya Kaoru, assistant master. Wasn't that the woman that Kenshin Himura married?"

"Yes, sir. The dojo burned down over a century ago, but her son rebuilt it, in the early 1900's. There's a small high school there now, which I attended -- the Himura Aki School for International Studies."

Sasaki said softly, "You have a gift for art, Kenny."

"Maa, maa. It's just duplicating something I've seen."

"Have you ever done anything like this before?"

"No," Kenshin shook his head. "I'm pretty busy, and I'm not an artist."

"With all due respect, I disagree." Sasaki handed the diorama back to him. Kenshin absently noted the man was wearing a long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the wrist despite the warm weather. _He's still not comfortable with the casual ways of Western schools. _"I'd love to see what else you could do. And I gave you an A on the script you turned in, by the way. It was very funny."

"An A?" He beamed. _That _had been unexpected. He'd written a script inspired by Atsuko as a child -- she'd been fascinated by the word 'butterfly' and he had come up with elaborate explanations for the term. It was silly, he had thought, but he could film it easily in ten minutes. He would just need to find a small child to borrow to play Atsuko's part.

"You know that I found some pictures of Himura Kenshin on a history site on the internet?" Sasaki said, conversationally, while the other students filed past. "You look a great deal like him. You could _be _him, somehow transported a hundred and forty or so years through time. He was a lot skinnier than you, but that's about the only difference."

Kenshin schooled his expression to complete impassivity. And he wondered, _Have I really gained that much weight between then and now? Perhaps ... we were always so hungry_. He remembered fighting with Yahiko and Sano over a single tiny fish that would be their only meal for the day -- and secretly allowing them to have the bigger pieces. He was still thin, and he worked hard to stay that way, but he knew he was healthier now. "Perhaps he is a distant relative. It would explain my hair."

"You don't know for sure?"

He shrugged in response. If pressed, he supposed he could invent a history that had Kenshin Himura's family coming from the same tiny mountain town as his, meaning they would almost certainly be distant cousins given the tendency for everyone to be interrelated in those towns. However, the less he said the less he had to remember later.

"Or perhaps reincarnation ..." Sasaki mused.

Kenshin's eyes widened before he realized he was being teased. _Chance _was a much more plausible explanation than either _reincarnation _or _160 year old Immortal _to a modern mortal man. "Perhaps," he agreed, with a chuckle. "It would explain a lot."

--------------

After class, Kenshin caught a bus to a used car lot. The salesman wandered somewhat dispiritedly out to meet him; Kenshin figured he didn't look like a very good prospect for a customer.

_Young, short -- which always equals worth less respect -- and I just arrived on a bus, so he likely thinks I'm poor._

"Can I help you?" The man sounded dubious.

"Yessir." Kenshin said, cheerfully. "I'm looking for an extended-cab pickup. A four-by-four."

He _liked _trucks. He just did. Atsuko had teased him that his love of large, macho vehicles was compensation for his lack of height. He had argued they were they were practical and, well, _cool_.

"Well, I can show you what we've got ... let's go inside and see what sort of financing we can get you, first, though."

"I'm paying cash," Kenshin said, calmly.

The man blinked, then said, "Oh, that's different. What price range?"

_I could buy this whole lot if I really wanted to, but it'd upset my accountant. _Kenshin hedged, "Show me what you have. I'm looking for something practical, but maybe with a little bit of lift."

"Well, there's the Ford back here ..." the man led the way to an F250 crew cab -- Kenshin was pleased to see that it had both a good-sized back seat and a split bench in the front. He nodded happily. It was several years old, which put it into the range of what he was willing to pay. It had also been lifted several inches, had nearly new tires on it, and the mileage was under 100K.

"Might work," he allowed.

The salesman retrieved a key and offered it to Kenshin. Kenshin waved the key away, "I'd rather hear you start it."

A bit uncertainly, the man did as Kenshin requested. Kenshin tilted his head, listening to the engine. There was a bearing whistling. "Turn the AC off."

The man did. The whistle changed in pitch. Likely that meant the AC compressor had issues. It might last another 100K miles or die tomorrow -- he had no way of knowing.

"Pop the hood, please."

The vehicle had a serpentine belt, as he'd suspected. That meant if the AC compressor seized up, he'd need to replace it. It would probably cost a couple of grand for a shop to do and it wasn't something he could repair on his own.

"No," he said, "not this one. What about that Chevy?"

That vehicle proved to be in better mechanical condition and ran well when he test drove it. It needed tires and new shocks, and he could hear the throw-out bearing in the clutch squeaking, but those were all things he could fix himself and he'd enjoy the tinkering. However, the salesman quoted a price that Kenshin found frankly offensive. _What, does he think I'm stupid? _He shook his head, "Too much."

"It's a very good vehicle!"

"Too much." He turned to walk away. "I'll go somewhere else. Maybe they will be more honest with their pricing."

"Okay, okay!" The man chased after him. "I'll take two grand off the price!"

"Still too much." He reached the bus stop in front of the car lot. He could see a bus coming, half a mile away. So could the salesman, whose eyes widened when he craned his neck and saw it.

"Three?"

Kenshin shook his head, and named a price that was roughly half the amount the man had stated in the beginning. "It will need a new clutch soon. You do realize this?" The bus was one block away now, and coming fast.

"Okay!" The man said, eying the bus. "You have yourself a great deal!"

"Thank you," Kenshin said, "for giving me a fair price."

An hour later he had his new truck, and transportation for the weekend with Carrie.

-------------

MacLeod waved from his office when Kenshin entered the dojo. "Hey Ken! She's upstairs. Go on up."

Upstairs, he discovered that Morgan was seated on the couch, watching television on Mac's laptop. "Mac said we were going out," she said, sounding at least a little curious.

"Aa. It gets cold here in winter and you'll need a better coat and some warmer clothes." Kenshin nodded. "I thought we could go to the mall and do some shopping."

"You can just drop me off. I'm sixteen. I think I can shop on my own."

Kenshin snorted. He well remembered teenage daughters of his own, and granddaughters, and a few hundred other young women whose lives he'd been involved in. _Some _teens could be trusted to pick their own clothes out, and select outfits that were both economical and modest. He didn't think that Morgan was one of those. "Sorry, kid," he said. "I'm paying, so you're stuck with me."

"Great-grandpa Trevor'd pay you back."

"Did Richie tell you what happened to George?" Kenshin asked, carefully.

Her eyes grew dark and she rubbed her arms. Kenshin noted the deep scratches on the insides of her forearms and winced. She was very troubled, more than he had initially thought, and enough that he was beginning to wonder if he shouldn't get a professional involved. Unfortunately, that would create a paper trail -- he didn't know yet if Dall had told anyone else what city she was in. If Dall hadn't, taking her to a doctor could give someone the clue they needed as to her whereabouts. "Yeah. He told me. How's he doing?"

"His children want to put him in a nursing home." Kenshin found the very words hard to say. He remembered Kaoru's last years: it had been hard on both him and the children, but they had rallied together to care for her and she had been able to stay in her home until the end. It would be different, he thought, if George had fewer family members, or they had to work, but he had both money and a very large extended family. And he was mentally sound, and easy to get along with -- he was just growing ever more physically frail. It was not like George was an Alzheimer's patient who needed round-the-clock care.

"Because he got beat up?" She hugged herself, suddenly, and wouldn't meet his eyes. "That's my fault."

"He believed you were worth being beaten up over." Kenshin rested a hand on her arm. "Morgan, George may be old, but trust me when I say that he knew what he was getting in to. He's a tough old man and he cares about you."

She spun away. Her motions were sharp, angry, and uncoordinated. "I'm not worth it."

"Ah, Morgan." Kenshin followed her as she hurried to one of the windows, currently open to allow a breeze in. He leaned his elbows on window sill and gazed out at the alley below, and the warehouses beyond. It had been on the fire escape just outside that he'd first realized Carrie was Kaoru, reborn. "I've done some terrible things in my life. I've learned not to dwell on the darkness in my past, only to work towards a brighter future."

She snorted. "You're what, nineteen? Lots of time to do a lot of evil there, Kenny."

"You're sixteen," he said, gently. "That's even less time to do evil."

"You'd be surprised," she said, gloomily.

"Not really." He glanced over at her. Her jaw was tense, the muscles bunched, and she was staring straight ahead. "I suspect you've done some things you regret."

"No shit."

He turned to face her, and caught her hand, and inspected the cuts on her arm. "Physical pain is easier to bear than pain in your soul, isn't it?"

She traced one of the old scars on his arm. "Did you do that to yourself?"

"No. Not the way you're cutting yourself." He pulled away.

"Then how?"

He hesitated. He didn't want to lie to her, but he didn't want to tell her the truth, either. He had no reason to trust her. Perhaps someday he could extend his trust to her, but not today. His standard, flippant, responses to the questions of strangers -- 'Glass factory explosion' or 'escaped tiger' or 'accident involving a tornado and a box of razor blades' -- weren't appropriate here.

"Don't worry about it." She shook her head. "I won't ask."

"Thank you," he nodded. "It's ... not something I like to talk about."

For some reason that made her relax, a bit. Perhaps it was simply that she knew now that she wasn't the only person with dark secrets. The tension faded from her limbs.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah. I guess."

---------------

"But I _like _it!" Morgan whined. "You said you'd buy me clothes!"

"I said I would buy you warm clothes for the winter." Kenshin plucked the very short skirt out of her hands and put it back on the rack. "That is neither warm nor appropriate clothing for a young lady."

He heard her suck in an angry breath. He was expecting a blowup. Instead, he got another whine, "But my _mother _would let me wear that!"

"And I'm responsible to your mother if you frostbite your knees, that I am," he said, with all the patience of a man who'd heard it all before, and from more manipulative children than this girl. "I will buy you jeans, and sweaters, and a warm coat. I will not buy you a skirt that a prostitute would be ashamed to wear."

"The style is to wear tights under it. Nothing's showing!" She protested, stung.

_Except an awful lot of leg, _Kenshin thought, but didn't say. He also didn't say, _You don't have the figure to wear that style, anyway -- you're too chubby._

"Do you know what men _think _when they see that much leg?" Kenshin finally stated, his annoyance getting the best of him.

"Duh!" Her voice tone and expression made it perfectly obvious what she expected men to think. And, to his chagrin, what she _wanted _them to think.

He blushed, mostly because he was afraid she thought _he _was thinking those sorts of thoughts. And, while he was definitely a man, he was a very picky man -- and she was too young and too immature to ever catch his interest. Plus, he liked his women confident, athletic, and skinny. He pictured her in that skirt, pictured a pooch of a belly hanging over it, pictured that lower lip hanging out in the pout she apparently thought was sexy, and _any _flicker of interest he might have had vanished instantly.

He also planted a hand in the middle of her back and gave her a gentle shove towards a display of jeans. "Pick three pair out and go try them on."

"I don't _like _these."

"Fine." He folded his arms. It was a large store. Surely she could find _something _worth wearing in it. "Go find three pair of jeans and three sweaters or sweat-shirts. Go on."

----------------

Three hours later, they'd finally compromised on two pair of jeans, one skirt that brushed her knees, and three sweatshirts. One of the jeans had the letters _KMA _printed on one rear pocket; he pretended not to notice this. However, he had vetoed the sweater with two large sunflowers strategically placed.

"You might as well be an old fogey," she grumbled at him, as he led the way to the food court.

_Even when I was young I disapproved of women flaunting their bodies. It is one thing for a woman to be wholly unconscious of the effect she has on men, as Kaoru was when she dressed as a boy. It's another to deliberately seek attention by dressing like a tramp._

He didn't say anything of these thoughts, however. Instead, he suggested, "We've time yet to catch a movie if you would like, or ..."

"Sounds like a _date_," she said, mockingly. "You asking me out on a date? I'm jail bait, Kenny, don't ya know?"

He said, very seriously, "I'm simply trying to be ..."

"What, be my friend?" Suddenly, she thrust the bag of clothes at him. "I don't understand why you're helping me or why you're being so nice to me!"

He caught the clothing and stared at her in dismay. She glared at him, breathing hard, from several feet away. Kenshin considered several responses, including simply turning his back and walking away, but he actually had an old trick he'd pulled on a few teens before. He assumed a hurt expression and said, "I take it you don't like me much."

She pouted, clearly having expected a different response.

"We can go back, I guess, if you don't want to hang out with me anymore ..."

"No, no!" Suddenly, she was apologizing. She huffed an exasperated sigh. "I'm sorry, Kenny. Sometimes, I just get so angry. It's nothing you did."

"I know I'm not exactly the coolest guy, and I'm a bit of a weirdo ..."

She waved her hands in the air and said, somewhat desperately, "You're _nice_! You really care, I can tell you do, and I'm so horrible sometimes ..."

"Tell you what," he said, smiling gently, and tossing her the bag of clothing back. "If you don't mind going to see a movie with an older guy like me, I'd like to see that new movie with Ron Perlman and Sarah Michelle Geller."

"That looked good," she admitted.

"Uh-huh." He agreed. "I've loved Geller since Buffy."

She gave him a funny look. "You were what, two, when the series ended?"

"Et-to ... I saw it on tape." He tried to remember the exact year that Buffy had ended and failed, but realized she was approximately right.

"Me too," she confessed. "Ever see Beauty and the Beast, though? Vincent was pure eye candy to watch."

Kenshin couldn't quite keep down a shudder. Carrie had sent him a boxed set of Beauty and the Beast DVDs under the correct impression that he might identify with Vincent. Unfortunately, the tortured hero had given Kenshin a ferocious series of nightmares after the first handful of episodes. Buffy killing fantasy creatures was one thing -- he didn't believe he'd have much of a moral problem slaying a vampire with no soul and a thirst for human blood. And he suspected Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu would make short work of most demons.

He'd cheerfully pictured himself as part of the cast, fighting alongside Buffy and the Scoobies. It was a fun fantasy. Kenshin, the first male vampire slayer ...

But to kill humans, as Vincent did, when lost in a mad rage? It had struck a little too close to home, given his reaction to the first few heads he'd taken. _There but for the grace of the Gods go I ... _

Something of his thoughts must have reached his face. With concern, Morgan said, "Are you okay?"

"Aa, I'm fine. I just never liked Beauty and the Beast. I liked Perlman in Hellboy, though. And he's done a lot of very good voice acting. I'm looking forward to seeing him with Geller ..."

The rest of the evening went a lot better. She behaved herself, mostly; he even found that he was enjoying himself later when they discussed the movie over ice cream floats in the food court later. He made her laugh a few times, and she seemed far happier and more relaxed when he took her home.

_Need to do this again_, he thought, as he drove home. _She may just need a friend. _

------------------------

Okay, I just had a plot bunny -- a story where Kaoru (in the 1800's) wakes up one day to discover she's a Slayer, Buffy style. She would make an awesome Slayer -- she'd just need to sharpen her bokken and she'd be good to go. Of course, Kenshin would be less than happy about the whole deal ... but as Kenshin observed, Hiten Mitsurugi-Ryu would be rather effective against demons.

I'm _so _not going to write that! I have too many other projects and not enough time! But the idea made me grin ...


	19. Chapter 19

It was pouring rain down, and Kenshin drove slowly and carefully down the winding country road. There was a more direct route that he could have taken, on a highway, but this route was beautiful and he was enjoying the time with Carrie. The rain, in his estimation, just made it more mysterious -- dark groves of trees overhung the narrow strip of blacktop.

"Wow. Those trees are ginormous!" Carrie stared out the window, mouth open in awe.

The forest was primordial -- ancient old growth, misty and mossy and dark. Haunted, one might claim; Kenshin very much believed in the supernatural, and he swore he _sensed _things just out of sight in the trees. He would not at all have been surprised if he were to see forest sprites keeping pace with his truck, or bigfoot shambling across the road in front of him.

"It's too bad it's raining," he said. "Or we could stop and hike for a bit. Once you get away from the road it's a different world out there."

"Maybe on the way back," she said, sounding very interested.

He glanced over at her, and she met his eyes and smiled.

And he was so glad, in that instant, to have made a point of making time for her. _Ah, Carrie, _he thought, _time is something we didn't always have in our last life together. Or if we had time, we didn't have the money to take vacations and go on adventures and have little luxuries in life. This time, I promise you, it will be different._

He decided to tell her that. "Something I always regretted, with Kaoru," he said, carefully, because it was still a bit of a weird subject, "was that I didn't always make time just for her. She was the most important person in my life, but sometimes, I lost sight of that. She was always _there_. And I thought she always would be, deep down. I couldn't really imagine a time without her. And then ... she wasn't. She was gone, and I was left regretting many things."

"Do you view me as a second chance?" she asked.

He huffed a sigh. They'd discussed variations of this theme several times, and he still didn't have a good answer for her. "I don't know."

She sighed right back.

He continued., "And then with Atsuko -- we weren't allowed enough time, though every moment I spent with her was precious. I wish I'd followed my heart with her sooner, Carrie. I wasted so much time. We could have had thirty or forty years together rather than fourteen."

"I don't know what to say to that, Kenshin," she confessed.

"Mmm." He glanced over at her. "You don't need to say anything. Just know that I intend to make sure I make time just for you, no matter how busy I am, if this thing between us works out."

"I'll do the same for you," she rested a hand on his arm. Her words were earnest.

He heard a click and looked away from the road to see that she'd unbuckled her seat belt. She slid over into the middle seat and buckle up again. He smiled and wrapped his arm comfortably around his shoulders.

----------------

It was raining even harder when they arrived at the hotel. Carrie took one look at the building, and grinned broadly. "Holy ground?"

"That it is. Chiyoko told me about this place -- apparently, it's well known to Immortals. It's an old convent, built on even older holier ground -- the native American tribes here had some sort holy place here." The building was made of blocks of grey limestone. It was large and forbidding, with small windows and a steep, dark-colored roof. Kenshin parked in the lot out front, next to an ancient stone wall.

"You said it was romantic." She shivered. "It looks haunted."

"Probably is." Kenshin said, cheerfully. He climbed out, opened the door to the back seat, and retrieved their luggage, which consisted of a duffle bag for himself and a suitcase for Carrie. Thus burdened he led the way to the front door.

Inside, there was a lobby with overstuffed pale leather furniture arranged in friendly circles for guests to socialize, and a pool table and big-screen TV. However, despite attempts at modern amenities the place had an indefinable air of age. The stone floor under foot was worn by the passage of countless feet, and hand-hewn timbers overhead were darkened by the smoke of over a century of fires built in the enormous fireplace that took up one full wall. Kenshin suspected the current lobby had once been a dining hall for the nuns.

Kenshin approached the registration desk. The man behind the desk smiled brightly. "Kenny! Back so soon?"

"Aa, back so soon. This is my girlfriend, Carrie Seta."

The man's brows beetled together in a somewhat mystified frown. "I thought you said you wanted two beds."

"Aa." Kenshin nodded an affirmative. "Two queen beds."

"He kicks in his sleep," Carrie said, teasingly.

"Maaa! I do not." Kenshin protested. Then, with dignity, he said, "Carrie is a _lady_."

"... right." The man shook his head. "Top floor, you said?"

"Aa." The hotel had four floors. Holy ground made the chance of an attack significantly less, but he was more comfortable with some distance between himself and the ground when sleeping in strange places. It was very effective for preventing sneak attacks. He already knew that the hotel's doors were solidly constructed -- nobody would be able to ambush them from inside without making enough noise to forewarn him.

He signed on the dotted line and the man handed them key cards. He said, "The room has a view of the ocean. I think you'll like it. It's quite a romantic view."

"Thanks." Kenshin shouldered his duffel and grabbed the handle of Carrie's wheeled suitcase and then headed for the elevator. "I'm sure we'll find it nice."

Behind him, Carrie had gone tense and quiet.

---------------

Carrie followed Kenshin into the hotel room. She was trying for calm, not succeeding, and probably not fooling Kenshin either.

_I am going to spend the night in a hotel room._

_With a man._

_Who is attracted to me._

It was a terrifying thought.

_I should trust Kenshin. He's absolutely trustworthy. My parents think he's a saint. And even if I _did_sleep with him my mother would approve. Why am I so damned nervous?_

Kenshin deposited his duffel and her suitcase inside the door. The room smelled clean -- of soap, air freshener, and a faint hint of laundry detergent. They were the odors associated with_nice _hotel rooms, as opposed to the mildew, body odor, and stale tobacco she knew came with a lesser class of hotel.

"Come here and look at this view," Kenshin said, sounding happy. She walked past a small kitchenette and the two beds to join him at the window.

It was still pouring outside -- a great, gusting, drenching, downpour. The sky was the color of lead. Visible through the torrents of rain was a wild stretch of coastline, with rocks and pounding high surf. It was beautiful and rugged and it made her hope the storm would let up sometime during the weekend so that they could poke around in the tidal pools.

It was an awesomely grand coastline.

Kenshin put his arm around her waist. "When I came here, a month ago, I remember thinking that it would be a wonderful place to share with someone I loved. I never thought I'd be doing so, so very soon."

"I'm sorry you were here alone. You're right. This is too romantic not to share." Wind made the window shudder in the frame, and thunder crackled overhead. His arm tightened around her.

Kenshin huffed out a sigh, after a moment "I had a long conversation with Atsuko when I was here last. Which was no substitute for having a live girlfriend, as it's a bit one sided, but I don't think I was alone."

"... with Atsuko?" That was a vaguely disturbing thought.

"Sometimes I sense her, watching over me." Kenshin released his hold on her and rested his elbows on the window. "I still love her. I always will. That doesn't mean I can't love you, too, or Kaoru and Tomoe before her."

"Is she here now?"

Kenshin shook his head. "I haven't sensed her around me since I started college."

"Mm. What are we going to do for dinner?"

"It's too stormy to go anywhere." Thunder cracked almost simultaneously with a white flash of lightning. "We can eat in the room -- there's a grocery store just across the street -- or in the hotel restaurant."

"Dinner in the room sounds wonderful."

----------------

Kenshin, she had already discovered, was a _fantastic_ cook. A perfectionist in all things, his cooking skills were utter genius. An hour later she lay on the bed closer to the window and said, "That smells ... amazing."

The room had a tiny kitchenette and small table. He'd purchased not just dinner and breakfast fixings but also a candle and a bottle of wine. The awesome smells coming from the kitchenette included two steaks searing in a pan, and mushrooms. He was tossing a salad while the steaks cooked. She admired his pony tail as he worked, and the slim, athletic lines of his hips.

"How do you like your meat?" He glanced over his shoulder.

"Medium," she said, blushing a bit. She wondered if he'd noticed that she was admiring his butt.

He flipped one steak over, then leaned against the counter. He looked a little nervous -- there wasn't a lot that unsettled Kenshin, she'd observed, but having to deal with relationship issues was sure to do it. "Kenshin," she said, very seriously, "what are you thinking?"

"That I'd like to kiss you, but I'm not sure how you'll react. We're alone here, and I don't want to make you uncomfortable." He wouldn't meet her eyes -- he was staring at the carpet somewhere near her toes.

She sighed. His consideration for her feelings was overwhelming, sometimes. What had she ever done to deserve the love of this remarkable man? She'd spent two and a half weeks with him, and already knew she wanted to spend the rest of eternity at his side. But ...

_He's it for me. _

In a moment of blinding, crystal clarity, she realized that. _This man, Kenshin, he is who I want to spend the rest of my life with._

Kenshin turned away to flip the other steak. After a moment, she realized she really should have responded to his statement that he'd like to kiss her.

"Kenshin?"

"Aa, Carrie-dono?" He said, without turning around. She suspected he was hiding his expression from her. There was tension in the lines of his shoulders, and a hint of nervousness in his voice. He stirred the mushrooms, then added a little more oil to the pan.

"I'm scared."

"I know, Carrie-dono." He turned the burner off under the mushrooms. "I wish I knew how to make you not scared of this one. I suspect you simply need time, and I am more than willing to give you that. Time is something we have in abundance, ne?"

"We could die tomorrow," she pointed out. "If somebody takes our heads."

Kenshin bowed his head, bangs falling forward to cover his eyes. "This is very unfortunately true."

"Kenshin," she said, and he looked up at her. "Are you planning on waiting ... wanting to wait ... until marriage between us?"

He puffed a short breath out. "Part of me thinks I should do the right and proper thing by you, Carrie-dono. But I am also a man of the twenty-first century as much as I am a man of the past ... Carrie-dono, what do _you _want?"

"I don't know." She watched as he turned back to the food again and flipped both steaks. "I can't get pregnant."

He carried the skillet of mushrooms to the table where he divided them between plates. "That's far from the only reason to wait, however -- would you get the wine out of the fridge?"

She bent over and retrieved the bottle from the pint sized refrigerator in the hotel room's tiny kitchenette, and grabbed a corkscrew from a drawer. Somewhat inexpertly she tried to open the bottle. It wasn't nearly as easy as it looked.

Kenshin took the bottle from her and neatly popped the cork out before handing it back. He continued, "Have I ever told you my feelings on sex?"

"Umm?" She knew she was blushing. She didn't know how he could be so casual about this sort of topic.

"It took me a long time to figure this out -- to be able to put it into words." He walked back to the stove and flipped the steaks again. She knew he wasn't nearly as calm as he appeared by the way he was fussing with the food. He was choosing to talk to her about this even though it wasn't an easy subject for him, either. "Sex is something you do with someone you love very much because it's personal, intimate time between just the two of you. It's time you spend bringing pleasure to your partner and it is doubly special because it is something you only share with them."

When she didn't say anything -- because she didn't know what to say, having never so frankly discussed the subject with anyone -- he continued, "This is why I am celibate if I do not have someone I love in my life. And it is also why I am willing to wait until you are ready to share that with me."

She nodded. "Makes sense."

He frowned. "Atsuko taught me that. Before, I was faithful to Kaoru and then her memory, but I didn't understand_why_. I simply didn't want to share that with anyone else ... I didn't want to let myself get _close _to anyone else, I didn't want to risk being hurt so badly again, as I was when Kaoru died. Sex ... it does bring partners closer together. There is so much trust involved, and frankly, teamwork, to make it good ... So every time I got to that point with a woman, I backed off and pushed them away. And I hurt a lot of good women that way. Friends, who wanted me to be more."

He puffed out a sigh. "After Atsuko and I ... well, I do not believe it was any secret that Atsuko liked men. She had many boyfriends. She told me, however, that it was different with me. That it meant much more. With others, there was something missing. With me, she valued the time together as much as she enjoyed the act. And the act itself was better, because we loved each other so very much."

He picked his plate up off the table and dropped one of the steaks onto it. He turned hers again. He added, with a sudden grin over his shoulder, "Mind, I'm a man and men are basically pigs. I am rather looking forward to making love to you."

She blushed so hard she could have sworn her _toes_turned pink.

Kenshin grinned. However, after cutting a slice into her steak and showing her the pink interior, all he said was, "Done enough for you?"

"Umm, yeah." She put her plate on the table. Kenshin frowned at the unlit candle on the table, then walked over to one of the dressers where he found a book of matches with the hotel's logo on it. He lit the candle, then turned off most of the room lights and joined her.

"This is delicious."

"Thank you. I raised the cow myself."

She laughed. "Silly rurouni."

"Oro, that's me." He flashed her a very goofy grin.

"It is the weirdest thing, Kenshin. I feel like I've known you all my life. I mean, I know we've talked on ICQ and via e-mail and stuff, but ... when you make that noise, or smile like that, it's weird. It's like I have seen you act like that a million times before. And when I was talking to you online, I _always _knew what you looked like -- I could hear your voice in my head, see your smile, know how you would react before you did. It wasn't like that with anyone else."

"On some level, you are Kaoru, I think. I will tell you that I find that both very weird and somehow very comforting."

"Mm." She still wasn't sure what to think of that. He was right in that it was unsettling. She wasn't sure that_she _found it comforting that she'd known him once before, and apparently had been very deeply in love with him. Though, on the other hand, it would certainly explain the depths of her feelings for him now.

_I loved him. We were husband and wife. Partners. We raised children together, traveled the world together. I grew old and died he did not. _

"As stubborn as Kaoru was," Kenshin said, "I rather wonder if the fact that she -- you -- came back as an Immortal wasn't something she managed to bargain from the Gods. She told me many times she wished she could be Immortal too, so she could stay with me."

"A bargain implies there was a price paid."

Kenshin snorted. "Immortality itself is a high price."

"Yeah." She understood that already, to some extend. "Kenshin ... do you _really _think that Kaoru chose to come back to you? As me?"

"I don't know." He regarded her with an unsettled expression. "It's certainly something I've wondered about."

"She must have loved you very much." And if that was true, then why was she delaying anything? _Kaoru would be terribly upset to see me hesitate like this. She was married to this man; they were the center of each other's world. _

"Aaa."

"Kenshin, can I ask you something I've been curious about?"

"Of course." He said, quickly and readily.

"How did she die? I've wondered."

He averted his face, suddenly and swiftly. The smile disappeared. She had not been expecting such a sharp reaction though she knew it wasn't an easy question. But, after all, it had been the better part of a century ago. Impulsively, she reached out and covered his hand. He squeezed her finger, and said softly, "Old age. The one enemy I couldn't fight for her was time."

His response was too easy, too flippant. _Old age_ didn't really explain his reaction.

"I'm sorry."

He said, in a very soft voice, "I understand why Immortals go crazy and it's not just from the Quickenings. You will understand this too, someday."

"If I ever go nuts, take my head," she said, fervently.

She expected him to deny that. But instead, he simply replied, "Aa. If you agree to see that I'm stopped if need be as well -- You, Chiyoko, or your father are about the only three people I expect could take me down. I'd prefer it be your father; Chiyoko, if he can't do it. Not you. -- Though I wouldn't put it past MacLeod to get lucky, if it came down to that as well; the man has managed to beat me in practice bouts a few times. He didn't live to be four hundred and thirty by being by being bad with a sword. And Adam could, I suppose, simply because he would make sure that it was not a fair fight."

"Bah. You'll never go nuts." The very thought was disturbing, as was the realization that he had a mental list of the people who could possibly beat him.

He snorted. "Carrie, don't assume that. If I ever have to take another head ..." He let that thought trail off. "If you ever go nuts, though, I think I would expend my last dying breath trying to bring you back to yourself. I could never take your head, Carrie. Ever."

She chewed and swallowed a mouthful of steak. "It's hard, isn't it? The man whose head I took ... he was _vile_. I saw images, memories, of his life. I know ways to torture people now that I never imagined ... blech. I never wanted to kill anyone, but I'm not sorry he's dead."

"Do you think you could do it again?' Kenshin asked.

She shuddered. The very idea was repellant. "It was me or him. Actually, me _and _you, or him. In the same situation ... yeah, I could. But ... but there _has _to be a better way."

"Kaoru didn't believe in killing," Kenshin sipped his wine. "She was vehemently against it. As much as I was, then."

"I'm sorry." It felt like she'd failed him, somehow.

"Don't be. I would have killed Dall had you not. You made the correct decision, Carrie. I ... feel as you do. I _hate_killing. I vowed never to kill again, but then discovered the problem with that is sometimes the world is better off if certain people leave it permanently. Marshall, unfortunately, taught me that. What happened to you weighs heavily on my conscience."

She shuddered. "He's the only one to blame."

"The terrible thing with Marshall, and perhaps what nearly drove me mad, was that he was _not _entirely evil, Carrie. He desperately wanted people to love him. Unfortunately, he was attracted to, and wanted love from, young teens. He wanted the worship of little girls and boys. And he had genuine feelings for them." Kenshin took a longer drink from his glass of wine. "But Carrie, he hurt so many children. Not just you and Chiyoko, but so many others, too. He lacked the ability or the desire to understand what he was doing was wrong. And then he took the head of an evil Immortal ... and lacked the insight and inner strength to fight it. By the time he got to you he was truly a monster."

"He was still looking for love," Carrie shivered. "He begged me to love him, you know."

Kenshin snorted.

She took a drink of her wine, then a bite of her steak. "Kenshin, if not for Marshall, we may never have met."

"Ie. I would have come to visit Akane sooner or later. I would have met you then."

"Perhaps."

She decided to change the subject, as this topic was one she didn't want to dredge up. This was supposed to be a romantic getaway. She said, "Let's not talk about him anymore. What are we doing after dinner?"

"I think the rain has stopped. Would you like to go for a walk along the shore?"

"In the _dark_?"

He smiled, this time a mysterious expression. "Yes."

--------------

In the dark, the crash of the waves was louder than it seemed by day. Kenshin sat quietly on the rocks by the shore, body still, fingers folded around one bent knee.

Carrie glanced over at him. The clouds had cleared, and by the light of a nearly full moon she could make out his silhouette and even his expression: tranquil, with a bit of a smile playing around his lips.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Just that sitting by the ocean and watching the waves on a beautiful night reminds me of a young woman I once knew."

"Yeah?"

"Her name was Shura." Kenshin sat stretched his leg out, and leaned back to look up at the moon. "She was a pirate, and she had told me she would kill me. I owed her Kaoru's life; mine was a fair exchange, I thought. In the end, though, I saved her life and we ended up friends."

"And the moon reminds you of her?"

"The night, and the ocean, yes, it does. I spent what I thought would be my last night on Earth tied to a pole. The moon wasn't quite full that night, but it was beautiful, and I could hear the waves below. I thought that it wasn't a bad way to spend my last hours on earth. She probably would have beheaded me if she had decided to do it, so I might well have been truly dead."

"Then I'm glad she didn't."

"Aa. It would have been most interesting for her, I'll warrant." Kenshin's voice held considerable amusement. "The last time I saw Shura was -- oh, last spring. We saw the latest Transformers movie together. We keep in touch -- it's easier, these days, with e-mail. She's still a free spirit; she's got a fifty foot sailboat and makes a living doing Gods-know-what. I don't ask."

"She's one of us?" Carrie blinked at the mention of Kenshin going out to the movies with another woman. She suddenly wasn't sure she _liked _that idea.

"Aa." Kenshin nodded. "She died her first death running a naval blockade during a war Japan had with Russia, in the early 1900's."

"You guys go out together?"

"She's a friend." Kenshin's teeth were very white in the darkness when he grinned. "And you're jealous., Carrie-dono"

"Well, yeah!"

"Please, Carrie-dono, don't be." They were sitting several feet apart on an outcrop of rocks. Kenshin slid across the rocks to her in one easy move. Sitting only a few inches away he said calmly, "I have many female friends, Carrie. That does not mean I am attracted to them. Shura is simply a friend, and nothing more."

She nodded. Reluctantly, she said, "I know you have many friends, Kenshin."

"Kaoru was always jealous, too." Kenshin said, with a smile that hinted at old memories. "She got very upset sometimes, and for nothing. Megumi used to bait her, as Margaret does you."

Something moved, nearby, a rippling of dim light and deep darkness. Carrie flicked her flashlight on, shining it at the motion, just as Kenshin said, "It's just a crab."

"How did you know?"

"The noise." He poked the crab with the sheathed end of his sword and it scuttled away.

She had not been able to pick out the tiny sounds of the crab moving from the roar of the surf. Kenshin, somehow, had. Sometimes, the man was unnatural.

When she looked over at him, she realized he was closer than ever. He was a dark silhouette in pale light, eyes in shadow, bangs ruffling in the night breeze. His hand rose to tuck a stray strand of her own hair behind her ears, and then, very gently, he kissed her.

She could still taste the ice cream they'd had for desert on his lips, and more than a hint of the wine. He kissed her tenderly, and she raised her hands to his shoulders in instinctive reaction. Then he pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers and said, "We should stop, Carrie."

"Kenshin, I don't want you to stop."

He moved away from her. "You don't know what you're asking."

She rested a hand on his arm, preventing him from rising. "Kenshin, maybe I do."

He exhaled raggedly and looked away from her. "I should not have kissed you."

"I'm not complaining."

"You're too young."

"I'm twenty."

"We haven't known each other long enough."

"I feel like I've known you for all of my life."

He fell silent, then in a very soft voice, asked, "What do you want, Carrie?"

"I ... I want _you_." Her heart was racing in her chest and she was breathing too fast. Surely, she thought, if he could hear a crab walking on the sand over the growl of the ocean, he could hear her breath whistling in her throat. She forced herself to add, "I want ... I want you to show me. I ... tonight. I don't want to wait anymore."

"You've had two glasses of wine," he said, mildly.

"So have you." It seemed like a logical argument.

He rose, suddenly, swiftly, then offered her a hand up. In the same soft, bemused, tone, he said, "You're scared to death."

"I'll _always _be nervous as hell. I also trust you, Kenshin." She met his eyes, which were reflecting the moonlight. They were so beautiful, she thought. "Will you ... will you help me?"

He was silent, for a long moment. Then he exhaled again and looked up at the moon. His voice was nearly inaudible when he said, "Aa."

"I love you," she repeated.

"I believe you," he said, paused, then added almost hesitantly, "And I, you."

----------------

Kenshin was quiet, on the way back to their room. The cheerful man who had told her stories of his past had been replaced by a serious, silent Kenshin who seemed lost in thought. He was distant, which disturbed her on multiple levels given that she'd just propositioned him.

_I'm going to sleep with him. If he'll have me. If either of us don't chicken out. _

"Are you okay?" she asked, in the elevator to their room. _She _was terrified. And eager. _So help me God, I want to see him naked._

"I did not invite you on this weekend to seduce you," Kenshin said, with some concern. "I ... am worried you think that you must pay me for this weekend."

"Is that what you think this is? _Payment_?" Irritation and anger flashed to the surface. "Idiot!"

His eyes widened, perhaps at the outrage in her voice. "I am sorry! I did not mean it that way."

She sniffed indignantly. "I have more pride in myself than that."

"Of course." It was a moment longer before he repeated, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Imply that again and, and, and ... I'll hit you upside the head until your ears ring!" She mimed clubbing him with a bokken.

"Oro!" He held his hands up defensively. "I'm sorry! You're right! You're very proud!"

She swung the imaginary wooden sword at him again. "And that didn't sound like a compliment!"

"Heavens forbid I tease you ..."

The elevator stopped at their floor. He ducked through the doors before they were completely open and danced backwards away from her. She menaced him with an upraised fist and he laughed, eyes sparkling. _Gods_, he was so good looking, particularly when he grinned for real.

She gave chase down the corridor. They reached the door together; she was laughing and he was grinning widely. And then, suddenly, just inside the door, he had her pinned against the wall and he was kissing her, hard, insistently, mouth open, tongue sweeping into her mouth. And so help her, but she _wanted _to be kissed like that; like he owned a part of her soul and was only claiming what was his -- what she was willing to freely give him, at that.

She slid her hands down his sides. His silk shirt caught on her sword-callused hands; his own palms, even rougher than hers, ran over her back.

"Are you sure about this?" He said, his voice husky and deeper than she had ever heard it. And she knew, if she said _no_, he would back off. They would do something innocent instead: watch a movie, watch the stars, talk about nothing of any consequence.

She didn't want innocent. By way of answer, she reached up between them to unbutton her shirt while, simultaneously, trying to bend over to kiss him again.

His fingers reached between them as well, joining her at the buttons. So _many _buttons. Then his palms were touching her bare skin. Those thick calluses were pleasantly scratchy as he slid his hands around to her back. Only belatedly did she realize he was going for her bra strap when he deftly unhooked it and she instinctively moved to cover herself.

He stopped. "Shh, shhh, it's okay."

"It is," she agreed, cursing herself for the reaction, _Way to be a shrinking virgin, Carrie! _and she forced herself to shrug her shirt off.

Kenshin's eyes were gleaming as she dropped her top, and the bra, to the floor. The air was cool on her skin; his gaze, heated. He murmured, "I love that you are so very fit ..." then swiftly unhooked the two top buttons of his shirt and yanked it over his head.

He reached for the room's lights. She stopped him. "I want to see ..."

"I thought you might be more comfortable in the dark," he hesitated.

"I want to _see _you."

"Bossy, bossy," he said, teasing. He turned off the overhead lights but left the lamp between the two beds burning. She admired the hard muscles of his back while he fiddled with the room's TV -- he found a station playing satellite music, soft jazz, and turned it up.

"Kenshin," she said, impatiently.

He glanced over his shoulder. "There is no hurry, Carrie. We have tonight, and tomorrow night, if need be."

He was _nervous_, she realized. Perhaps as much as she was. "What are you worried about?"

"Many things." He walked to the edge of the bed closest to the window, sat down, and started pulling his shoes off. She knew from his tone he wouldn't elaborate further until he was ready. He was taking an inordinate amount of time with the shoes, but she was almost grateful for the delay, because suddenly, she was terrified.

Her heart was racing, her mouth dry. She wanted to tell him to _stop_, but if she chickened out now, she feared she'd never have the courage to ask for this again. And Kenshin would never pressure her -- though she could tell he _wanted _this. Even sitting down she could see the bulge in his jeans.

_Will he just climb on top of me and do it? _She wondered. _Maybe a bit of kissing at first? _

She almost hoped it went that way. _Get it over with. _

With _get it over with _in mind, she bent over, pulled her sneakers off, then unbuttoned her jeans. That got Kenshin's attention: he paused from _still _fiddling with the laces of his hiking boots to look at her with a rather interested expression.

She stepped out of her jeans and stood in her panties. Suddenly, she was acutely aware that she hadn't shaved her legs in two days and there was the start of stubble. And she never bothered shaving above the knee; who would ever see? Would he notice? Care? And she never shaved her hair _down there _except for a bikini line though she'd heard some women did, and ... and she had weird tan lines from wearing shorts all the time and ...

"Gods," he groaned, "you are gorgeous, Carrie-dono. You are so very _fit _-- I love how athletic you are."

He had one boot on and one off. He yanked the other one off without untying it, then held a hand out to her. Feeling a bit skittish, terrified he'd say something uncomplimentary, she approached.

He lay back on the bed, and pulled her down so that she rested next to him. And they kissed, then, for a very long time. His strong fingers kneaded the muscles of her back. She explored the scarred terrain of his chest and back with her hands; she could feel not just old battle wounds in his skin, but knots and lumps in the muscles beneath. On one spot on his back, she could feel where ribs had been broken and unevenly healed.

Kenshin's hands were sensually rough against her own smooth, unmarked skin. Then he dipped his head and closed his lips around one of her nipples and, at the same instant, he slid his fingers between her legs. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. It felt so very good to be touched and held like that.

And she remembered, _Marshall touched me there_.

He sensed the change in her mood and paused, though he did not pull his hand away. He said, very low, "Do you want me to stop?"

Kenshin's hand, and the way he was touching her, was very different. It felt familiar, resting there. Pleasant. Gentle.

"Keep going," she murmured. She knew, then, that she'd be okay. Relief flooded her veins. _I'm not going to freak out again. _

Instead of continuing, however, he rolled away from her and divested himself of his jeans and boxers in one smooth move. She lifted her head to _look ... _she could see his muscular buttocks, and his scarred thighs. He was slim and wiry, and she thought she'd never be able to look at him in a pair of jeans again without thinking of the body underneath.

"God, you are gorgeous," she said,

He rolled over, smiling a bit shyly at the compliment.

He was erect -- it stood upright in a nest of fine, curly red hairs, darker than those on his head. And for the life of her, she couldn't imagine how that was going to _fit_.

"Umm ..." Her nervousness returned, redoubled. "You're _big_."

His smile turned into a smirk. Then, with amusement in his voice, he informed her, "Not really. No more than average. Not that I've compared it to other guys, or anything, but I always thought I was small until Atsuko looked the statistics up to prove me wrong. She _measured _it. And since I'm so short, I guess it looks bigger."

He was blushing, a bit, but also grinning with some amusement. Carrie boggled a bit at the idea of a woman so confident that she could _measure _her lover.

And at that precise moment, his cell phone rang -- a tinny rendition of _Ride of Paul Revere. _

She groaned, expecting him to answer it. She'd already learned that was his ring for George Trevor. Hers was_Somewhere over the Rainbow. _Kenshin, however, simply reached a hand over the edge of the bed, pulled his jeans up, found the phone, and thumbed it off without answering it. Somewhat distractedly he said, "Call him back _later_."

"What if it's important?"

"Making love to the woman I love is _far _more important than anything George might need to tell me," Kenshin kissed her again before adding, "Trust me, he'd understand. I should've turned that damned thing off anyway, but you've got me a bit ..." he nipped her earlobe, "distracted."

He rolled over onto his back and tugged at her arms. "I want you on top, Carrie-dono."

"Uhh ...?" Panic hit her in that instant. This was _real_. They were really going to _do _it. She squeaked, "...why?"

"I thought you would be more comfortable on top." He propped himself up on one elbow. "Less ... threatening. You'd able to set the pace. You wouldn't feel trapped."

She visualized taking charge. It terrified her, in whole new ways. Kenshin knew what he was doing. She didn't. And somehow, all she could deal with was letting him make love to her. Being on top meant she'd need to take the initiative. Frantically, she shook her head. "Not the first time!"

"Okay," he said. He'd slipped into Japanese minutes earlier and she only realized it now. "Later, then. This one _likes _being on the bottom. It's about trust, Carrie-dono. Being physically close to people is difficult for me. When I allow a lover to take charge, to hold me down and make love _to _me ... it affirms how much I trust them, that it does." He reached a hand out and stroked her cheek with his knuckles. "I trust you."

"I can't!" She said, near panic. And she remembered glimpses of a dream, of Kenshin underneath her, hard-muscled body between her knees.

"Okay." He accepted that without further protest.

He moved with more urgency over her now, hands rubbing and teasing, massaging and touching her everywhere. Distantly, she recognized that he was trying to arouse her -- and that if she wasn't so damned scared, it might have worked. _He's probably very good, _she thought, in between a hamster-wheel mental chorus of, _We're going to do it! _and, _He's not Marshall, you want this, relax and let him do it! _

Then he was on top of her. Very softly, he said, "You need to move your legs apart, Carrie."

_Gods, we're going to do it ..._

She realized she was holding her breath only when she sucked in a frantic, whistling gasp. She let him push her knees apart. He slid his hands under her bottom, tilted her hips up, and then she felt a hard nudge at her entrance ...

Carrie held her breath again, closed her eyes, and waited for him to make his move. Her heart was racing, adrenalin surging through her veins. She wasn't aroused so much as flatly terrified. _He's going to do it yes he's going to do it ... will he shove his way in quickly or slowly or ..._

He wasn't moving at all.

"Carrie-dono," he said, urgently, "look at me."

She shook her head, refusing to open her eyes. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed. Her heart was racing so fast she didn't think she could talk. The world felt like it was spinning._Marshall would have done this to me if I let him. Or the boys in high school, the ones who groped me just to see me scream and cry. _

"Kusu!" He suddenly rolled away from her and started to sit up. "I'm sorry, Carrie-dono. If you're _that_scared I would feel like I was raping you. You very clearly do not want this."

He sounded pissed. Her terror shifted in a blinding instant to outrage. She was offering him her very self, her heart and soul, and he'd just rejected her. She lunged at him, pinning him down to the mattress and snapped, "Just _do _it!"

"No!" He said, then in a very different tone of voice, said, "Get off me!"

She'd somehow landed on top of him in exactly the right position; she could feel him, still hard, poking at her. "You want me on top? Fine!"

She squirmed around, trying to make it fit inside her. Kenshin said, in a dangerous tone of voice, "Stop!"

Carrie froze, seeing his expression for the first time. He was underneath her, pinned down -- she had her hands on his shoulders, and could feel his penis rubbing against her though she couldn't quite get the mechanics to work -- it kept sliding aside. Things were slipperier than she'd expected. His eyes were enormous, terrified, and incredibly wide. Then he scrunched them shut and said, "Stop. Please."

"I'm sorry ..." she leaned forward to kiss him, to sooth him. "Gods, Kenshin, I'm sorry."

The moment her lips touched his he exploded underneath her. With impossible strength he bucked up beneath her, flung her off, scrabbled off the bed, and landed on his feet. Somehow, he'd grabbed a sword in the same motion -- it had been leaning against the wall.

"No!" He screamed, a terrible denial.

And he swung the sword at her.

It was _her _blade, and her blade was several inches longer than his -- it had been meant for a taller man in the 1800's, and fit an average-height modern woman perfectly. The tip slammed into the wall, scoring the plaster and slowing the strike enough that when the dull side of the steel slammed into her head it only knocked her off the other side of the bed. It didn't kill her, though her vision went dark.

"No!" He sobbed.

Training took over. She rolled back to her feet.

He stared at her wide-eyed, breathing hard, butt naked except for the sword in his hand.

"Kenshin ..."

He jumped up onto the bed. She knew he was going to lunge across it and attack her again and she had no defense. She screamed, "Kenshin, _help!_"

He reacted as if she'd thrown a bucket of ice cold water over him. He recoiled, uttered a sharp sob, flung the sword away, and collapsed to the bed. "Gods, Carrie."

"Kenshin?"

His eyes, now, were _furious_. "What Marshall tried to do to you? You just attempted to do to me."

"I'm sorry ..." A flashback, she realized. Somehow, she'd triggered a flashback to something in his past.

"What Marshall wanted to do to you?" He continued, mercilessly, "I've _had _done to me. And there wasn't any attempt at seduction. It was flat out rape. Carrie, I said_stop_."

"I'm sorry!"

"Trust." One word, and it was a condemnation. She'd broken his trust in her. He grabbed his jeans off the floor, yanked them on, snagged the room key, picked up a sword -- his, this time -- and then headed for the door. It banged shut after him.

She burst into helpless, horrified tears and sank to the ground by the window. _He'll never forgive me! I didn't mean it! _

Fifteen seconds of impulsive, hormon-driven stupidity, and she'd probably driven the man of her dreams away forever. Through her tears she whispered, "Ken... shin. Kenshin. Kenshin, no ..."


	20. Chapter 20

Carrie cried until she had no tears left, finished off the bottle of wine because it seemed like the thing to do, then she stood under the hottest water she could bear in the shower. The hotel's boiler must have been the size of an Olympic swimming pool because she knew she was in there for at least a couple hours.

She cried until she was dehydrated.

Over and over ... _Kenshin, _she thought,_Kenshin, I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I didn't know. I didn't realize. I never thought about a guy being raped. _

She wondered how anyone could have managed it. He was so very strong, so invincible. Perhaps he had been captured by an enemy. Academically, she knew such things happened during war. Had he been taken by the enemy as a hitokiri, perhaps? Or later, during his travels?

She shuddered. The very thought of Kenshin -- gorgeous, brave, kind-hearted, gentle Kenshin -- hurt in such a fashion was utterly unbelievable. _I'm sorry, Kenshin. _

He would never forgive her. She was sure of it. She'd lost him forever, over fifteen seconds of stupidity. He had told her so very clearly, and in quite blunt and plain language, what a value he placed on trust. How could he ever trust her again?

When she finally emerged from the shower there were other noises in the hotel -- the distant murmur of people talking, doors opening and shutting. It was just barely dawn; when she glanced out the window she could make out the indistinct outline of the shore, the rocks, and windswept pines on the hotel's grounds.

There was no sign of Kenshin.

Grimly, past the point of any tears, she packed her suitcase and then his. She figured that their weekend away was at an early end; she doubted Kenshin would even want to ride back to the city with her in the same vehicle. He had said, _What you were afraid of, you did to me. _

The fear in his eyes would live in her memories for the rest of her life. She'd pushed him past the point of rational thought. He'd tried to _kill _her -- she was pretty sure, from the force of the blow, and the angle, that he had been going for her neck. The sword had been deflected by the wall, and slowed; he'd clubbed her in the temple, instead, and not hard enough to do any lasting damage.

He had not reversed the sakabatou despite the deadly force of the blow, and it wasn't like him to clip a sword against anything -- he was astonishingly aware of his environment under normal circumstances. She thought perhaps that muscle memory of another blade had taken over -- a real katana, and probably shorter than hers. Hers had been made for a tall Japanese man from a century ago, and was just the right length for a slightly-above-average modern woman.

_Perhaps he thought he was holding the sword he used as a hitokiri. He was going for the kill. _

She still didn't know why she'd screamed, 'Help, Kenshin!' but it had worked, snapping him out of the flashback. Thankfully.

_Gods, Kenshin, I am so, so sorry._

By the time she had her suitcase packed the sunrise was painting the sky red and amber. There was still no sign of Kenshin. She wondered if he planned to come back to the hotel room at all. His car keys, cell phone, and wallet were still on the dresser so perhaps he would have to.

But she didn't want to wait.

Carrie remembered that he'd left wearing only his jeans, and dug a t-shirt and his duster out of his suitcase. After shrugging into her own coat -- the one he'd given her, which was too long for him -- she headed out the door in search of him.

Instinct took her away from the hotel, along a path that led along the top of the cliffs overlooking the shore. Somehow, she knew that Kenshin liked high, lonely places when he was brooding, and she found him without much difficulty. He was a half mile from the hotel.

The sun was just above the horizon when she spotted him. His hair was loose; during the night he'd lost the silver barrette he used to clip it back. A breeze off the ocean ruffled those locks which, free of his ponytail, were almost long enough to brush the waist of his unbelted blue jeans. The dawn sunlight made his hair glow like fire.

Certainly, he was aware of her approach. She'd felt his buzz from a hundred yards away. However, he didn't react at first.

He had his arms around his sword and one knee tucked to his chest. She stopped, behind him, ten feet away. She couldn't think what to say: "I'm sorry," seemed inadequate and, "Are you okay?" was stupid. He wasn't okay.

"I was a small boy."

His voice was roughened, and slightly nasal. She wondered if he'd been crying -- he was the original tough guy, and she had a hard time imagining him sobbing until he rendered himself hoarse, but Immortals didn't get head colds or allergies.

"I'm sorry," she had to say it, even if it didn't begin to encompass how much she regretted hurting him.

"It was a long time ago. Before you were born. Before Kaoru was born. I was a small boy."

"Kenshin?" she wasn't certain what he was talking about.

"I was a little boy when I was raped. I don't think about it much, anymore, but Dall brought those memories back, and then when you held me down... the man who did it to me, he kissed me on the lips, after. That is why I snapped when you kissed me." He rose, dusted off his jeans with a swat of his hand, and then turned to face her. "I owe you a profound apology, Carrie, for saying such terrible things to you. I was not in my right mind."

"You owe _me _an apology?" She said, in disbelief. "Kenshin, I ..."

"I said stop, and you did stop as soon as you heard and understood I was upset." He walked closer to her. "I reacted very badly, Carrie, and I am ashamed."

"You have _nothing _to be ashamed of."

"Neither do you." He'd read her like a book. His eyes searched her face from a couple feet away, then quietly he said, "What do you want to do now?"

"I packed our bags." She stared out at the ocean, a hundred feet below the bluff. If she looked at him, she was going to start crying again and she didn't know if she'd ever be able to stop. "If you don't want to ride back to Seacouver with me, I'll call a cab."

"Carrie."

His voice, soft and urgent, made her look at him. "Are you not listening to what I am saying? This one is not angry with you anymore. This one is sorry for being angry at all."

"But ... but what I did was unforgivable ..."

"Ie. What you did was born of your own fears, which I myself had brought to the forefront. This one has already forgiven you." His callused, gentle hand rested on her arm. "We cannot forget what happened last night, Carrie-dono, but we can go forward past it."

"I won't ever forget." Now she did look at him. He was gazing up at her, expression intent and earnest. This was Kenshin at his most serious.

"You will not make the same mistake twice, ne?" Now he actually had the slightest trace of humor in his eyes.

"_Never_!" she said fervently. She would die first before hurting him again.

"I cannot say that what happened here tonight won't ever happen again, as far as my reactions go." Kenshin folded his arms. He sounded unhappy about this confession. "Sometimes I cling to sanity by a fingernail's hold, I think. It has been worse since I killed Marshall, and the other two men. And Dall brought back vicious memories that I had not thought of in over a century. But -- your voice, calling my name. It brought me back. It will _always_bring me back. Do you understand me?"

"I think so." _Why my voice_? She wondered.

"Carrie," he said, very softly, "I love you. I am so sorry this happened."

"I thought ..." she exhaled raggedly. "I thought you wouldn't ever ... I thought I'd lost you forever, Kenshin, because of a few seconds' stupidity."

"Gods, never." He suddenly wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug With a gasp of surprise, she returned the embrace. He whispered hoarsely, "You would have to try a lot harder to get rid of this one, that you would."

She tightened her grip on him. "I don't deserve you."

"That's supposed to be my line," he said, with a low chuckle. His arms were tight around her ribs and his long hair brushed over her hands. She never wanted to let go, and he clearly felt the same way.

He finally stepped back. "You brought me clothes?" he said, as if noticing the duster and shirt draped over one of her arms for the first time.

"It's a little cool out here."

"Thank you," he said, simply, taking the t-shirt from her. Then, after pulling the shirt over his head, and putting the duster on, he yawned and said, "I am quite tired. Let's go back to the room, Carrie-dono. We can figure out what we want to do today after at least a few hour's sleep."

----------------

She was flatly exhausted. Carrie flopped onto the bed, yanked the covers over her head to block the morning light, and tried to let unconsciousness swallow her whole.

Kenshin disappeared into the bathroom. She heard the shower start; five minutes later, it quit and he walked back out into the room. She couldn't resist looking, but was disappointed to see he had a towel around his waist -- and a decidedly unsexy second bath towel wrapped around his head like a turban.

"That looks goofy on you," she said, swirling her hand around her head to indicate his head-towel.

"Oro?"

She snickered and put her head back down on the pillow. She was half asleep when she felt the bed dip beside her, and instantly came awake again. But he simply bent over to kiss her cheek. "Sleep well, Carrie-dono ..."

Impulsively, she held up the covers, inviting him to join her. He hesitated for a very long moment, expression utterly unreadable, then slid underneath the comforter with her.

She had only meant for them to share a bed while they slumbered. But when he moved to kiss her again, something came alive inside her. Perhaps it was the utter relief that he was giving her another chance. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he had been hurt as badly, or worse, than she had. Maybe it was simply that she'd been through an emotional wringer and she needed the intimacy, the contact. But something had changed within her, and she knew it as soon as he kissed her.

"Carrie-dono ..." he murmured. "This is perhaps not a very good idea."

"Shut up," she said, very firmly and very definitely. "Kiss me."

Then they were touching each other. And they were kissing each other, and not just on the mouth. She discovered she could make him arch his back and groan aloud by holding him in her hands. He was hard, and yet the skin was silken soft.

She was afraid, yes, but much less so than before. She didn't understand it, and she didn't try.

He rolled over onto his back and tugged at her arms. "I want you on top. _Please_."

She hesitated, remembering his reaction from before. Kenshin pulled at her arms more insistently. He said, in an urgent tone of voice, "_Please_, Carrie. It's about trust."

He had said, _We cannot forget what happened, but we can go forward past it._

She straddled him, at his insistence. And it hurt, but not nearly as much as she had expected. Once she figured out the angle of entry -- and this was harder than she'd expected, perhaps because every romance novel she'd ever read made it sound _easy_ -- there was a quick pinch, and he was home inside her.

After he'd spent himself, she held him. He sleepily relaxed into her arms, eyes sliding closed. _Trust_, she thought, as he was the first to fall asleep. He had allowed himself to trust her again, even though she was pretty sure she hadn't earned it.

Sleep claimed her, too, after a bit. Her last conscious thought was that this was where she belonged.

-------------------


	21. Chapter 21

Kenshin woke to the comfortable awareness that he was being held. Carrie was spooned behind him, an arm around his chest. He could feel her breathing and sense that she was still deeply asleep. Her fingernails, painted a very girly pink, brushed his arm.

_Carrie and I, forever, together. _

He tried that thought out, turning it around in his head, and examining how he felt about it. He discovered that it felt very good. An emotional weight he hadn't known he was even bearing lifted as he realized, _This is truly happening. Really and truly, she is mine and I am hers._

Moving slowly so as to not wake her, he slipped out from under the covers and out of her arms. She stirred slightly, rolled over, but didn't wake. The late afternoon sun had been what roused him; it was well past noon and probably halfway to dark.

Clad in nothing more than his boxers he walked to the kitchenette, started a pot of coffee, and sat down at the table. Carrie continued to sleep and with pleasure he watched her. She was utterly relaxed -- the real, honest fear of the night before was gone. He decided, studying her, that he truly did love her curls. And the swell of her breasts and the rise of her hips wasn't bad to look at, either. The blanket tucked to her chin did nothing to limit his imagination.

He vowed that would never know how very close he had come to walking away and never seeing her again for the rest of his Immortal life. If she had not come looking for him he would simply have left. His possessions could have been replaced; even his ID could be easily replaced, elsewhere.

_I could have killed her. I could have taken Carrie's head. _

At first, he had been blindly and irrationally angry at her. He had felt betrayed, and wounded; he had trusted her, and she had hurt him. In the beginning he had tried to justify his actions in his head.

He had run hard, blindly, falling several times in the dark, before he'd come to the edge of the cliff. He had contemplated throwing himself over the edge -- below, the ocean crashed against the rocks. He would not have died but he could have been swept out to sea and rendered insensate for months or years until the currents took him back to shore somewhere.

And then he had considered just _leaving_ ...

However, after he calmed down a bit, he had realized those thoughts and feelings were not true to his heart and soul. He thought, _Seven years after taking Marshall's head I am still paying the price._ There was a corner of his self that wasn't his own anymore.

_Those were words I said to her were ones Marshall would have spoken. _

Kenshin had never born a grudge in his life. Upon identifying the source of his anger he had thrown up until his throat burned and his ribs felt like they were ready to break. Worse, he had realized that he was trying to justify his rage towards Carrie in his head.

Deliberately, and with some effort, he had let the pain and anger go. He could not let those terrible feelings taint who he was. He realized exactly why she had reacted as she had; he had pushed her too hard, to fast -- he had asked for things she wasn't ready for, but which she had been willing to give him regardless. When he had realized this last night he had spoken a bit harshly, because his own emotions had been running high and he had been angry at himself.

Now, thinking back, he wondered, _How much of that was Marshall's taint and how much was my own heart? _It was hard to tell, and it disturbed him, even now. This felt right -- but Marshall had believed he was in the right when he had seduced dozens of young girls over his lifetime, and had arranged for the kidnapping of Carrie as a substitute for Chiyoko.

Of course, she had taken his decision _not _to have sex with her as a rejection, and when was Kaoru -- or Carrie -- ever anything but almost irrationally emotional when she was rejected?

And so she'd pinned him down. Young, inexperienced,_scared to death, _she had acted out of anger and hurt... but she _had _stopped when he had panicked. And she had tried to kiss him in apology. And it had been the kiss that had set him off.

_My reaction was entirely not her fault. I should have warned her. _

Kenshin sighed, watching her sleep.

He had come closer than he liked to killing her. _That_realization was why he had very nearly walked away. Even after he identified the source of his reactions, he had contemplated leaving. He was like a gun without a safety -- far too easy to accidentally fire. He could hurt her.

He had been prepared to say 'goodbye' -- _Sayonara_had been on his lips -- when she had found him. However, he had turned and seen her face and the sorrowful words had been arrested before they couldbe spoken.

Kenshin had witnessed that exact look on Kaoru's face when he had said goodbye to fight Shishio. He had thought, then, that leaving Kaoru was for the best. And she had thought it would be forever. _Bless Kaoru and her inability to follow directions_, he thought, irrelevantly.

When he had heard Carrie's words he had been shocked. Carrie had offered to leave him because she thought she had hurt him beyond all hope for forgiveness. She was punishing herself. And he had known, seeing the look on her face ands sensing the utter grief in her voice, that he could not let her do so. She would blame herself and it would destroy her. Such all-consuming grief would be worse than any injury he might possibly deal her.

Watching her sleep now, he decided he had made the right decision. He would have to communicate with her better, and be more careful, but he could _not _break her heart.

_And we are stronger, as a couple, for what happened last night. _

She stirred slightly and rolled over. Kenshin tucked one knee to his chest and sat in the chair, waiting for her to wake. He was in no hurry for her to rouse; he felt a remarkable amount of peace in his soul at the moment. Decisions had been made, commitments given, and he was content.

--------------------

Richie knocked on Morgan's bedroom door. "Hey. Kid. You hungry?"

She opened it, after a moment, and said, "What's for lunch?"

"Spaghetti and meatballs."

He could have sworn she turned green right before his eyes. She shook her head hastily. "No, thanks. I think I ate something that disagreed with me -- could I just have toast?"

She turned down more food than she accepted, he thought -- it was weird that she was as chunky as she was, for as little as she ate. He swore she looked bigger now than she had when she'd first come three weeks before. He frowned. "I thought you told me you liked spaghetti."

"I do. I'm just not feeling very good." She wouldn't meet his eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered if she was doing drugs -- meth or heroine would kill the appetite, for sure. However, she didn't look like an addict. In Richie's experience, they lost weight, rather than gaining it, and she didn't have the unhealthy pallor and skin problems he'd seen in most addicts.

"Okay." He accepted that. "How's your homework coming?"

"Lousy," she grumbled. "I got a 'C' on the last assignment."

"Better than a fail, for not turning it in." Richie reached out and ruffled her hair. She was a cute kid, when she wasn't being defiant. "Kiddo, if you need any help, I can try -- though I'm not sure I'd be much use. But we could get Adam, or Mac, to help you. Or Joe."

"Joe's _ancient_."

"Joe's smarter than any three of me," Richie said, cheerfully, though wincing a bit at her casual dismissal of Dawson.

"Can I go now?"

"Yeah, but I'm going to the dojo later, so you'll need to be ready to go about five."

"I don't want to go. Can't I stay here?"

"And if bad guys come after you?" Richie pointed out. He didn't say, _And I wouldn't trust you out of my sight, anyway. _

She scowled, and shut the door in his face with more force than was strictly necessary.

_Bitch_, Richie thought. Not for the first time, he wondered how Kenshin had talked him into this, and why he was so willing to continue. But he could answer that for himself. _I've been in her shoes. Also, Kenshin's got his hands full and I'm not sure he could take on any more without cloning himself. And I like the guy. _

_---------------_

Carrie woke an hour after Kenshin did. She stretched, rolled over, and said sleepily, "What time is it?"

"A little after four."

"In the afternoon?"

"You were tired." Kenshin regarded her over the screen of his laptop. He was halfway through an assignment for the screen writing course. While he could have watched Carrie sleep forever, he didn't welcome the thought of explaining to Mr. Sasaki why his assignment was late.

She started to sit up, then apparently realized she was naked, and reflexively clutched her blanket to her breasts, hiding herself.

Kenshin didn't say a word. He was very curious, however, to see what she was going to do. It had taken Kaoru a very long time to become comfortable with him seeing her body; for all that she had often dressed like a boy she had been a very modest woman. And he had been equally uncertain and shy in that regard, in the beginning of their marriage.

Decades of marriage to Kaoru and Atsuko had rendered him more confident in that regard. The first time he'd tried to hide himself behind a towel in front of Atsuko she'd started laughing, and somehow the laughter had turned into a naked pillow fight.

Carrie, apparently, was much the same as Kaoru when it came to her modesty. She got up with the comforter wrapped around her, and spots of color tinging her cheeks pink.

Kenshin said softly, "I love you, Carrie-dono."

She stopped in her tracks, halfway to the bathroom. Her eyes were very wide and impossibly blue. Then she squeaked and disappeared into the bathroom with a giggle. However, after a moment she reemerged, clad in a bath towel now. It didn't hide very much, but he made a point of not looking -- though he rather wanted to drink his fill of the sight of her long legs and athletic body. Imagination was good; reality was better.

"You can look," she said, softly, as if reading his mind. "I don't care."

She did care, because she was young and innocent and embarrassed to be seen by any man, even one she'd just made love with and someone who she was in love with. But he glanced up as she dropped the towel, and he smiled, and pretended he didn't notice that she was trying very hard not to cup her hands over her breasts. She said, trying for seductive, "... or you could do more than look?"

It came out sounding like a question rather than an innuendo. Still, he shut the laptop with a snick, and rose, and went to kiss her. And he proceeded to do more _more than look_.

_------------_

Sometime rather late that evening, after sex, dinner, and walk on the beach, Kenshin remembered the call from George. Carrie was half asleep in the bed, watching a movie on the TV -- he kissed her on the forehead and then called George back. It was daytime in England.

George answered on the second ring, "Ken-nii, good evening. I'm glad you called back."

"I apologize, George -- I was a bit occupied."

"Occupied?" George asked, in a friendly tone. "Is Morgan keeping you busy?"

"No, Carrie."

George snickered. "Oh, _Carrie Seta_. Is she pretty?"

"Very," Kenshin said, fondly. He smiled over his phone at Carrie. "Very pretty."

George was silent for a moment. Then he said, in a positively lecherous tone, "Reaaally? Ken-nii, please tell me that means what I think it means."

"Maaa! A gentleman never tells." Kenshin was blushing, knew it, and also knew that this was only a small taste of the teasing that was to come. Plus he was certain there would be less positive reactions; not everyone would approve of Carrie.

"Which means you got laid. Good for you." George paused, then added. "And her."

"Oro! George!"

"I envy you, pops. You're twice my age and still getting the pretty young things. Me, I still have to beat the ladies off with a stick, but they tend to be blue-haired, wrinkly old widows with bad teeth and -- if they want me -- bad eyesight."

Kenshin snorted. "I don't know, there was that blond housekeeper of yours, the one who had the IQ of tofu ..."

"As you would say, Oro! She was just after my money." George sighed. "Anyway, Grandpa, I'm glad you called. We do need to talk."

At the word Grandpa, Kenshin sat up. George _rarely_called Kenshin 'Grandpa' -- _Pops_, sometimes, when he was teasing Kenshin, but rarely _Grandpa_. Even though they both saw the relationship that way he generally called Kenshin _Ken-nii_, as half the rest of the world did, related or not.

"Georgie-kun, what's up?"

"They're putting me in a home for veterans._Tomorrow_. I wanted to give you my address there. I was worried you wouldn't know and you wouldn't know how to get ahold of me."

Kenshin winced. George was a proud man; he had a hard time envisioning him in any sort of institution. "George, you'll have your cell phone, won't you? I can call you every night. And let me know if you have _any _problems. Gods, I can't believe ..."

George cut him off, bitterly, "I can't keep the cell phone. Toby said it might be stolen."

"Oh. Well ..."

"And I can't make long distance calls on the phone in my room. So I won't be able to call you anymore." Kenshin could picture the angry look in his eyes, and utterly empathize with a desperate sense of isolation and loneliness. "This is a complete crock of shit, Kenshin. You and I both know all I need is a little help. I ain't bonkers."

Kenshin closed his eyes. The rage and pain in George's voice made him almost physically ill. "George, I have an honest question for you: would you like to come live with me?"

"You're living in a dorm. What are you going to do, Grandpa, have me sleep on your floor?" The snark in George's voice made Kenshin both smile and wince. It was funny, but he knew that there was pain behind those words. Had he not had other obligations, he would have been in England already.

"Actually, I've been thinking about getting an apartment. I could get a two bedroom, then you could stay with me. It would be no trouble, Georgie-kun. I know you're easy to live with; we've done it before."

George said sadly, "If I moved to Canada, I wouldn't be able to see my own grandchildren. And great-grandchildren."

Kenshin growled, annoyed, "And why aren't you living with _one of them_?"

"They're all too busy, or they have no space for one old man."

_An old man who's quiet, neat as a pin, and would be content with sleeping on the couch for all that he's wealthy and of the peerage, _Kenshin thought, anger rising. Though if it was a choice between George sleeping on the couch or in Kenshin's own bed, Kenshin would have slept on the couch, himself.

George huffed a sigh. "It'll be okay, Grandpa. I just wanted you to know where I'm going."

Kenshin snapped, "This isn't right."

"No, but I guess ... well, it will be nice to have someone do my housekeeping. The room's small, but it's got a nice view. And maybe I'll find somebody to play _Go _with besides you."

Kenshin doubted the latter. He pointed out, "You're pretty sharp at cards, too, George. Might be easier to find someone to play poker with."

"Maybe. Or chess. None of the young people today know how to play it. I tried to volunteer for the school's chess club and they didn't want me." George sounded hurt. "I just wanted to help the kids. Like you've always done."

Kenshin swallowed hard. He hadn't heard that story. Behind George's spare and short rant he suspected there was a lot of pain. When had George contacted the school?

"The Chess Club teacher thought I was too old." George sighed. "I tried to teach my grandkids, but I don't see them often enough."

A thought suddenly occurred to Kenshin. "Your phone in your room -- can you make toll free calls on it?"

"I assume so. Just no long distance. My grandson_specified _that. He said he didn't want to pay for the bills and that he knew I'd be calling you!"

_That _was news to Kenshin. It disturbed him that anyone would try to limit George's access to contact him. "Which grandson?"

"Toby. And he's petitioning the judge to be my legal guardian. I don't need no fucking legal guardian, Ken-nii. And_you _hold Power of Attorney for me. And you're my executor. I want _you _handling my affairs, not my grandson."

"I'll have _words _with Toby later," Kenshin said, through gritted teeth. _Toby _knew what he was, and also that George had a strong preference for Kenshin to handle his affairs if and when it came to a point where someone needed to. He had not been told this detail, either. He said, "At any rate, I'll send you some calling cards. You should be able to use them from any phone that can make local calls. And if you can't manage to hold on to your cell phone I'll send you a pay-as-you-go cell phone, too, if I can find one that makes international calls."

George repeated, "Toby said he's taking mine so it doesn't get stolen. Seems to me he's stealing from me himself."

Kenshin said, with a little amusement, "Well, Georgie-kun, you're a senile old man. Lose the phone inside a sock in your suitcase until you're moved in."

That earned him a dry laugh. "Point taken, Pops."

"Seriously, Georgie-kun, I'm worried about you. If anything doesn't seem right, or they're not treating you with respect, _call _me." Kenshin blew out an angry sigh. He was so tempted to jump on the next flight to London and raise hell with George's descendents. Who were his descendents. That gave him a right and perhaps even a moral imperative to yell at them.

_I wish Jessica was still alive. Watching her set these idiots straight would have been lovely entertainment._

After the call, he vented a bit at Carrie -- who listened silently before telling him, "Do you want to fly out?"

He sighed. "No. Not yet. George will get word to me if things go badly. And I'll talk to him after he's settled into the home. It has some advantages ... he'll have people making sure he eats right and takes his medications on time. And more company than just a housekeeper could provide. But I worry about him."

"He's your family."

"Aa," Kenshin agreed. "That he is."

-------------

The following afternoon, after yet another round in the bed before they'd checked out at noon, Kenshin had a smile on his face that Carrie had never seen before. He sat easily in the driver's seat of the truck, one hand up on the wheel, and posture utterly and totally relaxed. That smile was contented -- he seemed at peace with the world. They were almost home, and he'd had that expression on his face the whole drive.

She thought, with a strictly mental giggle, _I know how to stop Kenshin from worrying now. Get him laid. _

"Beautiful day, isn't it?" she said.

"Aa," he agreed.

"Kenshin," she said, softly, "what are we going to do now?"

He glanced sideways at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean -- our future."

"This one hopes Carrie-dono choses to stay with him for a very long time." He sobered, and a trace of concern crossed his face. "I know it's only been a short time, but Carrie, you have my heart and soul."

She hadn't been looking for a profound declaration of love. She giggled. "No, baka! I mean, what are we going to do in the near future? I'm talking about housing arrangements and stuff."

"Oh. That. Want to get an apartment together?" He grinned. "After this semester. In the interim, I propose we kick Meg out on a regular basis."

"Oh, good lord, she's going to tease me." Carrie could just picture Meg's likely reaction. Meg was going to torture her.

Kenshin shrugged. "So? She is just happy for you."

"And jealous. I think she's got the hots for you."

"This surprises me not at all," Kenshin said, with a smile that Carrie didn't quite understand. It seemed to hint at some private amusement.

He said, "Carrie, I want you to understand something -- I have many female friends. Meg will probably become one of them. You will see me give time and friendship to them. But you need never worry about my fidelity towards you. What Meg wants of me, I cannot give her. And she'll realize that, soon enough."

She snorted. "I'm not worried." Even though she had been. She couldn't help it. _What if he finds someone better? _A little voice kept whispering in her heart. _What if he realizes I'm not the angelic Amazon he seems to think I am? I've got a hot temper and I'm stubborn and awkward sometimes and surely he doesn't _see _that yet ... _

"Yes you are." Now he was teasing. His eyes sparkled with merry amusement.

"Hey!"

In a more serious tone he said, "I'd like to swing by Richie's, if you don't mind. I want to check on Morgan."

"Yeah, sure. And check on Richie, too. That guy's a saint to look after that little brat."

Kenshin snorted. "Hardly a saint."

----------

At Richie's, they both felt his buzz -- and he opened the door before they reached it, clearly having sensed their approach. One hand rested on something unseen just inside the door, but as soon as he saw them, the scowl on his face cleared. "Carrie! Kenshin my man! Good to see you!"

Kenshin grinned. "Hey, Richie."

"You guys have a good weekend away?" He held the door open, and then carried his sword back to a decorative rack on the wall.

"Aa," Kenshin glanced at Carrie -- who was blushing cutely and avoiding everyone's eyes. He had mercy on her and said simply, "It was good to spend time with Carrie."

Richie sighed dramatically. "I envy you."

Carrie spoke up, "Hey, Meg's single. You ought to ask her out."

Kenshin managed _not _to snicker when Richie rolled his eyes. "The last thing I want to do is get involved with a nosy med student."

Kenshin said, in Japanese, to Carrie, "We_definitely _have to get those two together."

"Hey, hey, no talking about me in gibberish I don't understand," Richie protested.

"Oro?"

"Oro, oro, so innocent you sound. You're plotting something, aren't you?" Richie said, suspiciously. "I think I have your number, Ken. You act innocent and sweet and kind and yet somehow still manage to get everyone around you wrapped around your little finger. Well, it's not going to work ..."

"How's Morgan doing?" Kenshin said, brightly. He was amused by Richie's words. Of course, his observation wasn't _true _-- he didn't deliberately manipulate anyone. Much. Very often. Well, sometimes, but, only for their own good and only into doing things they knew were the right actions to take anyway.

Not that he'd ever _admit _to the manipulation of his friends. The best schemes were those where the people thought everything was their own idea.

Richie sobered. "I told her that she wasn't allowed to leave her room until she finished her homework. And I took her TV away. So she's sulking."

"I'm sorry, Richie." He was, genuinely.

"Don't apologize," Richie held a hand up. "I volunteered and I had a good idea what I was getting into."

"Personally," Carrie said, with a snort, "I think that girl needs to wake up and get a reality check. Everyone's sticking their necks out for her -- Kenshin was _tortured _because of her! -- and she's sulking about homework? Richie, you should have seen Kenshin. It was awful!"

"Maa, maa. She doesn't know everything about Dall," Kenshin said, uncomfortably. He didn't like the reminder of what Dall had done to him. And he spoke softly, too, because he was concerned that Morgan might be eavesdropping behind her closed door. He'd raised enough teenagers to know that was a very real possibility. He sighed. "I'll go talk to her."

Richie grunted something.

Kenshin added, in an even lower tone of voice, "Restricting her to her room and taking the TV away was a good idea, by the way, Richie, but if she persists in being stubborn about the homework you can also take the rest of her stuff away. I don't like the attitude she's presenting -- were she mine, I'd take everything she owned away and make her earn it back by doing her chores and homework."

"She doesn't have much."

"No? She has sheets and pillows for her bed, and shoes, and ..."

Richie held a hand up, stopping Kenshin. "You're evil. I think I'd prefer a spanking, were I the kid."

"I've just done a few interventions with recalcitrant children in my life. The homework _will _be done when I am in charge." He tilted his head sideways and considered Morgan's rather thick waist. "You may also wish to restrict her diet. Healthy, but bland. If she wants to eat better, and I expect she does, she will _do her homework_."

Richie shook his head, "I'm not so sure that would work. That kid's got a touchy stomach. She turns her nose up at half of what I cook -- she's been living on cereal and fruit and doesn't seem to want anything else."

"That's weird," Carrie said. Apparently, Carrie's opinion of Morgan's likely dietary habits wasn't too different from Kenshin's.

"Really?" Kenshin said. Something was bugging him, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

Richie sighed, and said, in a tone of confession, "I don't have a high school diploma myself -- I have a hard time being really mean to her about not doing her homework."

Kenshin wasn't actually surprised by that. This was Sano's reincarnation, and Sano hadn't exactly been a scholar either -- frankly, Richie was a good bit more responsible than Sano had ever been, and that was probably because of MacLeod's influence. Richie's early life had been just as difficult as Sanosuke's, though in different ways. But he lifted an eyebrow at Richie and said, "How much easier would your life have been with an education?"

Richie snorted. "I know, I know. Mac said almost the same thing to me earlier today when I said I hated hassling her about it."

Kenshin nodded. "MacLeod is very wise."

"You two are two peas in a pod, sometimes. Though I can't see him calling you 'wise' -- he tends to call you a fool, most of the time." Richie was teasing; they both knew that Mac did say that, generally with a good bit of amusement. Behind the humor was a bit of truth in that Mac _did _think Kenshin was often foolish. And Kenshin cheerfully didn't give a damn what Mac thought.

"Hmm. At any rate," Kenshin glanced at the closed door, "I think I'm going to have a word with her."

When he knocked lightly on the door, Morgan answered too quickly -- she had been waiting on the other side of the door, and Kenshin was glad he'd kept his voice very low in talking to the others.

"Kenshin," she said, trying to sound surprised and failing.

"Hey, kiddo," he smiled at her. He stepped through the door and shut it behind him, then said quietly, "Richie tells me you're having trouble with your schoolwork."

She scowled. "I don't feel good."

"Must be hard," Kenshin said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. "You're so far from home, and you don't know any of us."

"It's okay," she said, but her eyes and her body language said she was lying. "My mom e-mailed me. I'm supposed to go home this weekend, because they want me to talk to the detectives again."

Nobody had told _him _that. Kenshin tried to hide his dismay at the havoc this would play on his school schedule. "I'll get airline tickets."

"I was going to go by myself." She wouldn't meet his eyes. "My mom's arranging the ticket."

"No, you're not. I am going with you." This was going to play havoc with his school schedule, but he wasn't about to let her go alone. _Damn _it. And he'd been looking forward to another weekend with Carrie.

"I can go by myself!" She sounded almost panicky. "I can, Kenny! You don't have to come."

"Shh." He rested a hand on her arm. "It's okay, kiddo. I'll go, and I won't let anything happen to you."

"That's not what I'm worried about." She hunched her shoulders, averted her eyes, and mumbled under her breath, "Honestly, they could kill me and I wouldn't even _care_at this point."

That sort of talk alarmed him, because he heard that she believed what she was saying. He asked softly, "Is there something I should know?"

"No. You know what happened. I saw the guy get shot and I can identify the shooter. It was some guy involved in organized crime. A bigshot, I guess. The triggerman." She wouldn't meet his eyes. He wondered what had really happened; she wasn't telling the whole story. "That's it."

"Why were you there?" He asked, a question that had been bothering him. He knew so little.

"I was babysitting the ... dead guy's ... little sister. My grandmother, she worked for the dead guy's dad -- as a housekeeper. I was just supposed to play with her and keep her out of trouble every night." Her words were clipped and short and she stared at her hands. "The dead guy's name was Jeffrey. We were, umm, good friends too."

"You knew him?"

She glanced up, briefly, then nodded. "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Very well -- but I _am _going back with you." His oathsworn duties to his descendants took precedence over school or personal attachments. Carrie had demonstrably proved to him that she could take care of herself; Morgan couldn't.

She sat heavily down on the bed beside him and didn't say a word.

He took a stab at what was bothering her and said,"Morgan, it's hard, isn't it -- seeing someone die?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I have been there." He had seen so _many_people die: at his own hands, at the hands of others, from accident, illness, and foul play. He'd held three wives while they passed away in his arms and had despaired each time because he had been unable to save them. He knew the utter cold _finality _of death -- the way that the life drained from the bodies of the dying, the way that their eyes went blank, and how it felt as their _ki_flickered away like a blown-out candle.

She glanced at him -- then looked at him again, eyes searching his scarred face and arms. "Were you in an accident?"

"No. And like you, I don't like to talk about it." He paused, then said softly, "I was a teenage soldier. In a war."

"Oh." He expected her to ask more questions, but she didn't.

"It was a long time ago," he added, feeling he needed to say something more.

"You're still a teenager!"

"A bit older than that." He changed the subject. He was being very honest in the fact that he _didn't _like to talk about it. "Morgan, Richie's very upset that you're not doing your homework. Do you need help with it?"

"No," she said, sullenly.

"Then why?"

She shrugged. He guessed her refusal to do her schoolwork was about having control over something in her life, even if she herself didn't realize that. Still, that wasn't a healthy way to handle the turmoil in her life and he couldn't allow it to continue. Likely, he thought, her refusal to eat was along the same lines -- something she could make decisions about for herself, even if they weren't very good choices.

"Kiddo, you've got to do it. Good grades are important. I know that your life is pretty unhappy right now, but someday, you're going to need that education. You should do it even if you don't feel like it." He smiled at her, encouragingly. "I know you can."

"I don't care about my future," she spun away from him. He heard hurt and pain in that declaration and wondered what, exactly, had happened to this girl to make her so wounded. "I don't care at all! I don't even have a future!"

"Maa, maa, nothing's going to happen to you." He pursued her across the room. She stood with her hands fisted at her sides, staring out the window, and he hovered behind her. It wasn't his inclination to touch or hug, but he wondered if he should in this case -- however, he was afraid if he tried, she'd object. She wasn't a touchy-feely kid. So he settled on asking a question, "Morgan, why do you think you don't have a future?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Papa Kenshin surfaced. He'd heard that _exact _tone from his own children on occasion: sullen, evasive, and all out of proportion with the actual issue. "Well, as your guardian at the moment, it's my job to see that you do it, regardless of your feelings in the matter."

"You can't make me."

Kenshin lifted an eyebrow. "No, I can't."

He walked back to her bed and removed the pillows. She stared at him -- when he looked back at her, she had an expression of utter confusion on her face. "What are you doing?"

"If you want your possessions back," he pulled open her dresser drawer, "you'll do your schoolwork. I'll tell Richie and MacLeod that you can get one item back each time you do an assignment."

"You can't!"

He scooped up an armful of her jeans.

"Stop!"

He added two handsfuls of her underwear to the top of the pile.

"Kenshin, stop!"

He stopped. And looked at her. "Will you do your schoolwork?"

"Yes!" She wailed.

"Okay." He set the armful of clothing and pillows down on her bed. "If it's not all done by tomorrow morning I'll tell Richie that all you get is a mattress, a sheet, and the clothes on your back."

"I thought you were my friend." She had tears in her eyes.

"I _do _care about you," he said, quietly, and more distressed by her tears than he was ever willing to admit -- he didn't _like _being mean. "But because I care, I will make sure you do what needs to be done so that you have decent prospects for your future."

"You sound like my parents!"

"Good." He was glad to hear that. He'd wondered what her parents were like -- he had not been overly impressed by her grandparents.

And suddenly, but unsurprisingly to Kenshin, she burst into tears. "I'll run away!"

"Go ahead." He indicated the window with a wave of one hand. "It didn't work the first time, but you are welcome to try again."

"I hate you!"

"You may hate me. You will still do your schoolwork."

Unbidden, an echo of a past conversation surfaced in his memories -- he had screamed at Hiko because he had been twelve years old and sick of learning to read when he would have preferred to be learning to fight, _"I hate you!"_ and Hiko had responded, _"You may hate me. You will still do your schoolwork."_

_Oro! _Kenshin thought, with a strictly mental laugh he managed to keep from bubbling to the surface. _Hiko's probably laughing his ass off right about now! _

He wondered how Hiko would have handled Morgan. Likely, he decided, with a good bit less tact and more impatience than Kenshin.

"But I don't want to!" She sounded near panic.

"You do not have to want to. You simply have to_do_." _Yoda_, he thought. _Now I'm channeling Yoda._

She sobbed helplessly, tears streaming down her face, breath coming in great messy gasps. Kenshin couldn't help but think of Carrie's tears the day before -- _Carrie _had genuine reasons to be upset. _Carrie _had behaved in an adult manner despite a great deal of very real hurt. Carrie was only four years older than this girl -- Morgan was old enough that Kenshin would have been willing to treat her as an adult herself, if she would only act like one.

In contrast with Carrie's maturity, however, Morgan was throwing a tantrum over being forced to do her schoolwork. He seriously wanted to turn her over his knee and give her a well-deserved butt-blistering spanking. It was taking everything he had to remain calm.

"School is a privilege, Morgan. I will not allow you to throw such opportunity away because you simply don't want to do it."

"It's pointless!"

He moved to pick up the pillows and clothes again. He was quite willing to carry through with his threat, though he felt bad for Richie, who would have to enforce his punishment if he did.

She fell silent, realizing he was serious. Then she started crying again, but there was a different note to her tears. The anger had been replaced, suddenly, by broken grief. She sank to the ground, covered her face with her hands, and sobbed helplessly.

Kenshin hesitated, far less moved by feminine hysterics than he once had been -- raising teenage daughters had taught him a certain amount of skepticism even when the tears sounded real. However, after watching her for a moment he decided her grief was genuine and not just higher level of frantic upset over the loss of her possessions. He knelt beside her and rested a hand hesitantly on her shoulder. Without any further encouragement she launched herself into his arms. "Everybody hates me! I thought you liked me and you hate me too!"

"Shhh, shhh," he tightened his grip on her and tucked her head under his chin. "I don't hate you. But I will not let you casually throw away your future, Morgan. You must do your schoolwork. I will help you, if need be, or Carrie or MacLeod or Joe Dawson will. But you must continue your education. You have so much opportunity in this world. I will not let you waste it."

"But I don't," she sniffled. "I don't. You don't understand. I don't!"

"Why?" He didn't understand where she was coming from. Why didn't she think she had a future?

She clutched his shirt and just sobbed.

"Shhh, Morgan. I can't help me if you don't tell me what's tearing you apart so badly."

"I can't ..." Her breath was coming raggedly in her chest. He could feel the swell of her stomach against his legs, because she'd thrown herself into his lap, and the feel was subtly different than he'd expected -- he had thought she would be soft and chubby. She wasn't. Her stomach was harder than he'd expected, and swollen from within.

"You're pregnant, aren't you?" Kenshin asked, quietly.

She _stopped _breathing. Then she nodded wordlessly into his chest.

He smoothed her hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize until just this moment. Is that why you think you have no future?"

She shook her head. "I can't talk about it."

"Okay." He continued to stroke her hair. She was crying again, but her sobs faded to soft hiccups. "How far along are you?"

"I don't know."

"You haven't seen a doctor?"

She shook her head without a word. "My parents would make me give it up."

"For adoption?"

She started shaking. He could feel her muscles trembling. She also smelled unpleasantly of cheap perfume and fear sweat; he wanted to let go but didn't, sensing she needed the reassurance that the arms of even a relative stranger could bring. "I wanted to keep it secret for as long as I could. Last time ..." she trailed off. "Last time I told my mom as soon as I knew. She made me ..." she didn't finish her sentence, but Kenshin realized that she didn't mean by 'giving it up' that the baby would be placed for adoption.

Kenshin swallowed hard. He could put himself into her parent's shoes very easily. She was a young girl -- and she would have even been younger than this, the first time -- who had her whole life before her. Raising a child would have altered her future, and very possibly, not for the better. He had a hard time finding the birth of any child to be a bad thing but he wouldn't want any daughter of _his _to be an unwed, teenage, mother.

On the other hand, there was always _adoption_ as a reasonable alternative.

_Shame, _he thought, _and embarrassment. _And perhaps that wasn't an insignificant consideration. She would have faced ridicule if she born a child to term. The humiliation before her peers alone could damage her.

But he could also see her point of view, and why she was so distressed by the thought of losing the baby -- and was a lot more sympathetic there. He loved children; he could still, almost half a century after Yukio's death, summon the little-boy smell of Yukio's hair up in his memory. He could hear the giggles of a happy baby, he could remember the joy of watching a small child who was _his_learn about the world. He could easily remember how it had felt to hold his youngest son, the only one who had been a baby when adopted. He could picture Kaoru's face as she played peek-a-boo with her son, could see her in his mind's eye standing by the gate with Yukio snuggled into her arms, waiting for him to return from a trip -- she had very often met him at the gate. Yukio had been between two and three when they'd adopted him; not a small infant, but still young enough to be _baby_.

He would do _anything _to be a father of a baby again ... and he could hear the pain in her voice at having had to 'give up' one. And he knew and understood immediately why she had hid this pregnancy.

"I will make sure that you can keep this one, if you want to," he said, softly.

She blinked. "I ... I don't _want _a baby."

"Oh." He digested that. The comment of,_Well, then, why didn't you use a rubber? _was on the tip of his tongue, but he managed to bite that back. "What do you want?"

"I don't know." She rocked back and forth on the floor. "I don't know."

"Morgan, this is important: how far along do you_think _you are?"

"At least ... five, six months. I guess." She didn't sound certain. Then she shook her head. "It was in March. My last ... you know. Last ..." she couldn't seem to force the word out.

Kenshin, who had been a husband to three separate women, lifted an eyebrow and said calmly, "Period?"

She blushed and nodded. "So however long ... it's September now."

"Well, you're _having _a baby," he sat back on his heels and ran a hand over his hair as he contemplated the problem. She continued to burrow into his shirt, hiding her face in his shoulder. He was having a hard time juxtaposing the argument over homework with _this _conversation. The same child who he had been willing to treat like a bratty little girl, because she had been acting like one, was going to be a mother.

_Gods help both of them, _he thought, _if she keeps it. _And based on her claim of conception sometime in March or April at the outside, the baby was pretty far along -- possibly as much as six month. There would be no question of ending the pregnancy -- even if her parents had wanted it, six months was too late. He'd wait a few weeks before telling them, to make sure, but at six months, a baby could conceivably _survive _a premature birth. Far too late for an abortion.

She sniffled. "Don't tell my parents. They'll freak."

"You'll have to tell them sooner or later, kiddo," he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "I'm sure they'll forgive you."

"You don't know my mom. She called me a _slut_ last time."

"I'm sure she was angry, but what you have done is not unforgivable, Morgan." He thought for a moment while she was silent and shaking in his arms. "We need to get you to an obstetrician, and soon. Do you mind if I tell Carrie and Richie? I will have Carrie take you."

"You can't take me?"

He shook his head. His mind was racing ahead on ideas on how to handle this. "It is not a good idea. Morgan, if I take you then they will think that perhaps I am the father and I am almost twenty according to my driver's license. It would be statutory rape and they may get child protective services involved if they believed that was the case." He wondered who the father was. And how old. The father needed to be told. He'd tease that information out of her later, he thought. It wasn't relevant at the moment because the father was a hemisphere away.

"I'd just tell them you weren't the Dad. And they could do a test or something."

Kenshin sighed. He gave her a very tiny grain of the truth. "Do you remember when I said I was a teenage soldier? My identity papers are not completely accurate. My visa and driver's license will stand up to casual scrutiny but if someone did a real investigation and traced my history they would find discrepancies. I do not wish to invite that sort of trouble on either myself or the friends who have helped me build this new life."

"Oh." She sat back and studied him. Her eyes were very red and her cheeks swollen. She wiped her nose with the heel of her hand and then said, "Where were you a soldier?"

"Like you, I have things in my past I'd rather not talk about." He smoothed her hair back from her face. "But I promise you this -- I will do everything in my power to see that you are not forced to do anything concerning this child that you do not want to. Do you understand?"

She nodded. And whispered, "Thank you."

"I only ask one thing."

"What ...?"

"_Do your schoolwork._."

She flushed and started to protest.

He pointed a finger at her. "Do it for your child if not for yourself. You need to start thinking about your baby, and if you're going to be a single mother, you need a good job to support your baby. That means you need a diploma."

Morgan gulped and nodded. "Okay, okay. I'll do it."

"Good. Get started _now_. If you finish it all -- and I'll check -- I'll take both you and Carrie out to the movies tomorrow." Kenshin stood up. She remained seated on the floor and he ruffled her hair. "Everything will turn out okay, Morgan. I promise."

"Thank you," she murmured.

Kenshin hoped he would be able to keep that promise.


	22. Chapter 22

"She's six and a half months along," Carrie said, to Kenshin, after he let her into his dorm room on Monday afternoon. She had skipped her last class to take Morgan to the doctor -- Kenshin had found a clinic that had been willing to see Morgan that day. "The doctor said baby looked healthy. And Morgan's blood sugar was too high. It's a girl -- here, Morgan gave me a picture."

Kenshin had hitched himself up onto the desk and was now seated on the edge. He blinked and accepted the surprisingly clear black and white ultrasound of the unborn infant. He smiled faintly and fingered the glossy paper. "Megumi would have given her soul for something like this picture, and for the medical technology we have today, that she would." He stared past her, out the window where the late afternoon sun was casting long sunbeams through the glass. Carrie noticed that the glass had been recently washed -- hers was dusty and had cobwebs in the window. Kenshin was almost obsessive-compulsive about cleaning, she'd discovered.

Kenshin's voice drew her back to reality. "Does she need to go on insulin?"

"The doctor doesn't think so, but she needs to check her blood sugar every day. She wasn't very happy about that." Morgan had cried when told that she needed to test herself. Carrie hadn't quite understood why; testing blood sugar no longer even required the pricking of a finger -- just touching a sensor to one's skin.

"It's for the baby's good," Kenshin blinked once, and turned his attention to her. He seemed a little surprised that Morgan would object. Then he sighed. "She's not ready to be a mother, Carrie. I hope when she sees the baby, it will be more real to her."

Carrie snorted. She could agree with that. "The doctor had a talk with her about giving it up for adoption. She seemed to be interested in that idea."

"I would support that." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "It would probably be best for her, and for the baby. She is perhaps not very close to the father; Richie says she has never mentioned a boyfriend, and has made no attempts to call anyone in England. Not even girlfriends. When was the last time you knew a sixteen year old girl with no friends at all ...?"

He trailed off. Carrie wondered what he was thinking. His expression was very distant. After a moment, however, he said, "I'm flying back to England with her on Thursday night. The tickets are already purchased. We're to meet with the police on Monday and I plan to be back by Tuesday."

"The doctor said she was safe to fly," Carrie confirmed. She wondered about Kenshin's classes; he would miss three or four days of class.

"Good." Kenshin folded his arms. "I'm going to try to talk to her parents when I get there. They need to know she's pregnant."

"She doesn't want them knowing."

"She doesn't get a vote in that matter," Kenshin shook his head. "Particularly since she's talking about giving it up for adoption. As a grandparent myself ... I would have been horrified if one of my own grandchildren fell into the hands of a stranger to raise. I would have done everything in my power to keep the child within the family. I hope her parents feel the same way. The Trevors are a very large clan; while I do not think that it is best for Morgan to raise the baby out of wedlock, when she is merely a child herself ... there may be someone in the family who could take the baby."

He trailed off again. The troubled look returned to his eyes, and was doubled in intensity. Carrie had a sudden suspicion about what was bothering Kenshin. _She is Kenshin's many-times great grandchild. She is his family, even if she does not know it._

"Has she said anything about the father?"

Carrie shook her head. "I asked. She says she doesn't want to talk about it."

Kenshin nodded thoughtfully. "Do you think she's protecting him, or she's scared of him?"

"I don't know." Carrie sighed.

"She can't give the baby up for adoption without the father's approval. Or possibly his parents; I don't know how the laws work in England if he's a minor. I'll need to find out." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "There's two possibilities -- one is that it was _not _consensual, in which case we need to figure out who the boy is and see that he is suitably dealt with. The other is that she did consent to sex, but either they broke up, or were never a couple. In the latter case, it will need to be handled differently, and I'll need to meet the boy before I make any judgments on what I personally think should be done."

Kenshin's matter of fact attitude impressed her. But, she supposed, he'd seen this sort of thing before. She observed, "Bet you never had to deal with this sort of thing in the 1800's."

Kenshin shook his head. A smile played about his lips. "We didn't have effective birth control. It happened more often. I was never more glad than when both of my mortal daughters were safely married."

"Oh."

"I find it ironic, now -- one of many reasons I was so cautious and reserved towards Kaoru was that I did not want her to end up in the same position as Morgan is, unwed and with child."

"But you would have married her!"

He shook his head. "There were so many threats in my world, then. I had so many enemies who wanted me dead for revenge or political reasons. I did not know if I would live to see her as my bride, or to see children grown."

"Didn't seem to stop you with me," she said, teasingly.

"Mmm." He reached his hands out, hooked them behind her hips, and pulled her close, spreading his knees a bit as he did. Since he was seated on his desk, he was a little taller than she was. It was weird to look up at him. "I have as many reasons for saying yes to you as I had for never so much as touching Kaoru for two years. I am not sure, in either case, that my reasons are entirely legitimate or honest."

She chuckled at this wry confession -- Kenshin was human, who knew? -- and willingly stepped closer to stand between his spread knees. His shoulders, hard-muscled and scarred, under her hands, felt very good. She wondered how far this might go -- and how far she wanted it to go.

The door opened, suddenly, behind them. Kenshin stiffened and said, "Good evening, Sandy."

"Oh." She could feel Sandy staring at them. "Um, don't mind me."

_Yeah, we're going to rut like bunnies right in front of you, Sandy-kun, _Carrie thought, sarcastically. She heard him move across the room, rummage through his desk, and then head again for the door. "I'm going out for a bit."

"Good evening, Sandy," Kenshin repeated, in a slightly more forced tone.

After he'd fled, she giggled. Kenshin said, "Oro! He probably thinks we're about to make love. This is very embarrassing, that it is."

"Are we?" She asked, though the thought sent a frisson of fear through her. She wanted to, again, but still, she was scared to death. It was a purely illogical, she thought; and perhaps it was because she just didn't know what his expectations were right now.

He kissed her forehead. "We promised Morgan we'd go out to the movies tonight, remember?"

"Damn, I forgot." Actually, Kenshin had made the promise -- though she understood what he was doing. He was trying to forge a connection with the girl, who obviously needed friends. Carrie had no issue with that; Morgan's obvious emotional pain made her want to help, too.

She glanced at her watch -- it was five in the afternoon. If they wanted to pick Morgan back up and eat before the movie, they'd need to get a move on. She blew out an exasperated sigh. "I have homework, too."

"A lot, or a little?"

"An hour's worth, at least." She had some anatomy terms to memorize, and some math problems to work.

"Mm. I got mine done already. Do you want to do it in the car or do you want me to take Morgan alone? I'm sure she would like you to come."

What she _really _wanted to do was to take advantage of Sandy's absence to hang out with Kenshin. But she shook her head. "I'll do it tomorrow on lunch -- it's due last period. If you don't mind skipping lunch with me."

"Your schoolwork comes first, that it does." He glanced at a folder on his desk as he said this. She looked over too, following his gaze, and saw that there was a very red "C" emblazoned on it.

Kenshin said softly, "My set design homework."

"Ouch. Mrs. Andrews really has it in for you, doesn't she?"

Kenshin smiled, a very tight and controlled smile. "Regardless of if I get a 'C' or an 'A' I will pass the class, and that is what ultimately matters. That, and the quality of work that I can do for an employer. One mediocre grade my freshman year will not keep me from gainful employment."

"What grounds did she give you for a 'C' -- you worked very hard on those diagrams!" She knew the homework; she had helped him with his spelling. He'd had to draw diagrams of sets. He'd been detailed and precise and had obsessed over the work into the wee hours of Thursday night so they'd have time for their trip over the weekend.

"She felt they were overly detailed."

"Last time she gave you a bad grade, it was for not enough detail!"

"Carrie-dono," he smiled faintly. "I appreciate your outrage but it is unnecessary. I am confident in the quality of the work I do and my grades matter little as long as I pass."

"Liar. It bothers you." Kenshin was being too polite about this; _too _mature. She knew he wasn't being honest in his feelings about the matter. Likely, he didn't want her outraged on his behalf. Likely, he knew she was perilously close to giving the teacher a piece of her mind.

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. "It upsets me, Carrie, this is true. But, as they say, in the grand scheme of things, it is not very important. A thousand years from now, will a bad grade in one class because a teacher did not like me matter?"

"It matters now," she insisted, annoyed.

--------------

"Himura-kun!"

Kenshin heard his last name, properly pronounced in the way that only another native speaker could manage. He was cutting across the grass to the parking lot, and a few seconds later, as he was turning, he recognized Sasaki's voice. Carrie, next to him, stopped curiously and stared -- she, too, had heard the accentless pronunciation.

The man waved and hurried after him. Kenshin grinned, and said in cheerful Japanese, "Are you working late, Sasaki-sensei?"

Being called _kun _by anyone was unusual; Kenshin truthfully welcomed the address. He liked Sasaki -- quite a bit, actually. The man was funny, warm towards everyone, and obviously cared a great deal about his students. _Mrs. Andrews could take lessons from him. _

"I was tutoring a few students in the library, yes." He nodded. "I teach several levels of Japanese language, as well. That's actually why I'm happy to see you."

_Tutoring_, Kenshin guessed.

Sasaki confirmed Kenshin's guess, "I could use a few tutors. You'd be paid for your time by the school, if you're at all interested."

"Sensei, I'm very sorry," Kenshin truly did regret saying no. He would have valued the ability to work with the other students. "I have too many other obligations, and there are not enough hours in the day."

In her own accentless Japanese, Carrie said to Kenshin, eagerly, "Kenshin, what about me? And Chiyoko?"

Kenshin nodded. "Sasaki-sensei, this is Carrie Seta, my girlfriend. Her Japanese is flawless. And we have a friend who is fluently bilingual as well and could likely use the work. She is young, but very intelligent."

"Carrie Seta?" The man blinked. For a moment, Kenshin thought there was a spark of recognition in his eyes. But Sasaki simply held a hand out to Carrie to shake, American style. "Ah, so you are the girlfriend whose family he went to meet. Are you half Japanese, then?"

It was a reasonable question, given her dark hair. Carrie grinned, and shook her head, and said, "I'm adopted, sir. Both my parents are from Japan -- my father from Kyoto, my mother from Tokyo."

"Ah, so you recognize what a fine catch Kenshin here is, then," Sasaki said, teasingly. "He seems to be the very much a proper young Japanese man."

_Both _of them blushed. Kenshin cupped a hand behind his head and said, "Oro! Sensei, please!"

Carrie giggled. "I'm not complaining at all. School wouldn't nearly be as much fun without Kenshin around."

Sasaki chuckled. "You're blushing, _Himura_-kun."

"Et-to ... yes, I am." There was an odd stress on his name.

Carrie giggled, "Not only is he a proper Japanese man, he's got the complexion of a red-head. He blushes adorably, I think ..."

"Carrie!" He protested.

She snickered. Sasaki laughed outright, then sobered and said, "If you're really interested in tutoring, come by my office tomorrow and I'll give you a test -- speaking the language fluently isn't the same as reading and writing it, and the kids need tutoring on the written parts. It's mostly the third and fourth year students who I need help for, also."

"Sure. I could use the money." A glint of purely capitalistic greed lit her eyes. "How much?"

"Ten dollars an hour. Probably two or three hours, three nights a week, in the evening. And Saturdays. If your friend works out, she'd cover the other days." Sasaki looked relieved, though he was shooting quick, odd glances at Kenshin. Kenshin suspected that finding fluently bilingual Japanese speakers wasn't easy -- there were people who spoke one language or the other, but not both well enough to tutor.

"Will you have enough time for your classes?" Kenshin asked her, pointedly. She was carrying six classes. And to the best of his knowledge she'd never had a job before. Soujiro would have not approved; he would not have seen it as safe. Kenshin thought she could handle any likely dangers that came up; _time _was more problematic for her.

"Yeah, yeah."

Sasaki suddenly changed the subject. "I saw you two sparring in the gym, last week."

Kenshin nodded -- he'd noted the teacher's entrance into the gym.

Sasaki asked curiously, "I know a bit about kendo, but I did not recognize your school."

"Kamiya Kasshyin Ryu," Carrie said, cheerfully. "Kenshin's been teaching me."

Sasaki tilted his head to one side, and considered that. Kenshin wanted to curse; he had not mentioned to Carrie that Sasaki was dangerously familiar with Meiji era swordsmen. He was also unsurprised to find that the man was a kendo practitioner, as well. "The Kamiya school is very rare, is it not??"

"Aa." Kenshin confirmed, unhappily.

"You are both very good, from what I saw."

"We normally practice iado," Carrie said, in that same cheery tone, making Kenshin want to take a wooden bokken to _her _head. "But real steel upsets the gym management."

"I can imagine why." Sasaki smiled. There was twinkling amusement in his eyes. "Someone might lose their head."

Kenshin went completely still as he processed Sasaki's words. Carrie, beside him, had frozen in place. Kenshin could hear his heart beating in his ears, too fast. He was rattled to his core. What did Sasaki know?

Sasaki was either oblivious too, or ignoring, their reaction. He said, calmly, "I need to go -- my wife will be upset if I'm late for dinner."

As he turned to go, Kenshin lunged forward. A thought had occurred to him, and in that instant, he acted -- he grabbed Sasaki's wrist and shoved the sleeve of his shirt up, baring his wrist. Bare, unblemished skin was revealed.

"Gomen, gomen nasai ..." Kenshin stammered. "I thought you were someone else ..."

Sasaki calmly tugged his sleeve back down and said, "They replaced the tattoos with an embedded microchip several years ago. Too many of your kind know about us now. It's gotten a few Watchers killed."

Kenshin _growled_. He folded his arms, spun away, and started to stalk off to his truck without a word. _Watcher_. He felt like an utter fool. And he felt betrayed. He had _liked_Sasaki, and the man was a spy.

"Himura-sama," Sasaki's voice sounded almost hurt. "I'll see you in class tomorrow."

Kenshin stopped. "I'll drop the class."

"I wish you wouldn't." Sasaki hadn't moved. "Himura-sama, I asked for this position. You have a reputation for being devilishly difficult to Watch, and yet, you are a fascinating man."

"I have no desire to be studied like a bug under a microscope." Kenshin refused to turn around. Yet he couldn't make himself leave. Carrie, beside him, was alternating between staring at him and glaring at Sasaki.

"You ... you're a _Watcher_!" She stomped her foot. Kenshin winced, hearing Carrie working her way up to a good mad. He didn't want a scene. Likely, since Sasaki had chosen a rather public location for this revenue, Sasaki didn't want one either. "Ooh! And Kenshin liked you!"

Sasaki sighed. "I was going to try to keep it a secret, you know. But then I found your reputation for being a good man was very accurate. That's unusual, for an Immortal -- except for a handful like Duncan MacLeod, most Immortals are not very nice people. You, by contrast, are someone I would genuinely like to call a friend."

"_Himura_." Kenshin said, suddenly. Sasaki had called him by his real name. He suddenly felt very, very stupid for not catching that at the outset of the conversation. He felt his cheeks grow warm. It wasn't often that he missed cues like that, but he had let his guard down around the man and, in truth, his mind was on other things. Sasaki had never struck him as anything approaching a threat.

"You know," Sasaki said, "for someone with a reputation for being nearly psychic, it took you long enough to figure it out."

Kenshin made sure his annoyance at that statement wasn't showing on his face,then he looked over his shoulder. Calmly, he said, "You were dropping hints, were you not?"

Sasaki visibly relaxed. "I was trying. I probably should have just come out and told you, but that's really against the rules, and I was worried that you would react badly. Himura-sama ... also, I wanted you to get to know me as me. I was worried you would write me off as just another watcher if you knew me straight off as one."

"I would prefer to be called Himura-san. Or Kenny-kun, in class." Kenshin turned all the way around. He let a smile touch his lips. The man's explanation was honest, even if he didn't exactly agree with Sasaki's reasons for keeping things secret.

Sasaki's eyes widened. Then he nodded. "To keep your cover. Of course."

That wasn't Kenshin's real reason for requesting that. He wanted no-one's adoration. However, he simply said, "I'd be far less annoyed if you _had _simply told me. You have told untruths to this one. I would observe that people who tell untruths often do so again in the future."

Sasaki looked sharply away. He had the good grace to look embarrassed.

"Leopard can't change his spots," Carrie agreed, with a note of keen disgust. She had her arms folded and spots of angry color on her cheeks. "You tried to hire us so you could watch us."

"Actually, that was an honest offer." Sasaki blew a sharp breath out. "I do need tutors for my class. And I thought Kenshin might need a job to help with his cover."

"I don't. I'm supposed to have a trust fund. Carrie-dono, you should take the job, though," Kenshin said, finally, with an unfriendly growl in his voice. "_Somebody_ needs to keep an eye on him."

-------------

"Oh, God, my sides hurt!" Shannon clutched his ribs and staggered down the sidewalk. He'd laughed until he was sore. There was something about Brandon that _clicked _with his own sense of humor.

Brandon, canes ticking on the sidewalk, followed after him. They'd eaten at a restaurant off campus on the north side; the movie theater was on the south side. When he had asked Brandon if he would have trouble with the walk, Brandon had tartly informed him that he'd 'hopped a marathon once' and that he would have no trouble making the half mile walk to the theater. Shannon suspected that Brandon was just proud and bullheaded enough to be telling the truth about that marathon.

When he looked back, Brandon was grinning, revealing a row of very white, very even teeth. He'd been correct in that he wasn't having problems with the walk, either -- his stride was relaxed and loose. Brandon blew blond curls out of his eyes, then purred, "Well, you have to admit that he is pretty hot ..."

"I cannot _believe _you think Edward Elric is hot ... he's like a kid!" Shannon burst out laughing again. They had started out discussing what famous people they found attractive. The discussion had degenerated somewhat, by Shannon's standards. "And he has no nose!"

Brandon, with dignity, said, "He's not a kid in the _movie, _you ass. And anyway, I always identified with him."

Shannon sobered. Brandon would, he thought -- the anime character they were discussing was disabled, an amputee. "I guess you would."

"Yeah," Brandon said, "he's the snarky big brother, with a gentle, peaceful younger brother he looks out for. And he's a _genius_, man. -- What, you thought I identified with him because he's crippled?"

Shannon snorted and waited for Brandon to catch up. "Asswipe."

"What?" Brandon's innocent look might have been copied from Kenshin, though it didn't work quite as well -- Brandon couldn't quite clear the twinkle from his eyes. Kenshin, when Kenshin was playing dumb and naive, managed to look like an angel. There was too much devil lurking in Brandon's blue eyes to completely pull the expression off.

"You're trying to make me squirm and get all embarrassed. Doesn't work anymore, pretty boy." Shannon elbowed Brandon, making him stagger sideways. He easily caught himself, with a laugh.

"Oh, I'd _like _to make you squirm ..." Brandon's voice turned low and sultry. He actually batted his long eyelashes at Shannon, causing Shannon to sputter in disbelieving amusement and a little annoyance. "I want to make you squirm _all over_." He pursed his lips and made kissing noises.

Shannon rolled his eyes. "Don't you _ever _give it a rest?"

Brandon snickered. "You could rest with me awhile ..."

"Asshole ..." Shannon said, then added hastily, "Do _not _comment on that ..."

"Why, was that a Freudian slip about wanting mine?" Brandon asked, sweetly.

Shannon, face flaming, threw his hands into the air. "I am beginning to regret asking you out tonight, dipshit!"

"I could make an reference out of that, too, but it wouldn't be very sexy." Brandon grinned at him. His blue eyes were sparkling with merriment. "Isn't it amazing the number of things you can make into innuendos in the English language?"

Shannon said shortly, "Yes. It is." He was starting to get genuinely pissed. He _had _asked Brandon out to dinner, with the intention of it being an actual date. That had taken more guts than he was actually willing to admit -- he'd stood outside Brandon's dorm room for fifteen minutes before summoning the courage to knock.

Now, on the date, Brandon had spent half the time reducing him to helpless giggles of laughter, and the other half of the time apparently being deliberately annoying. Sometimes, with Brandon, it was hard to tell where the line between _obnoxious _and_funny _lay

Brandon had sobered, apparently in reaction to someone he saw on Shannon's face. Shannon met his eyes -- and Brandon suddenly blew out a short, sharp breath. "I'm sorry, Shannon. Sometimes I get a bit carried away."

"Yeah. You do." Shannon wasn't about to let it go.

"It's a defensive mechanism." Brandon leaned on canes, and looked away. "If I can piss people off, then I don't have to deal with them rejecting me later. At least, that's what all the shrinks say."

Shannon glanced around; it was past seven at night, and the campus was dark and deserted. He took two steps towards Brandon, cupped his fingers under Brandon's jaw -- Brandon needed to shave, and the scratchy prickle of his beard against his fingers was completely unlike any woman's face. He pulled the man's chin around and looked him in the eyes. "I didn't ask you on a date because I didn't like you, Brandon. Good grief, I _asked you on a date._That's the first time I've ever asked a guy that."

Brandon heaved a sigh. His breath was warm on Shannon's fingers. "Okay, okay. I get it."

"I don't think you do." Shannon leaned in and kissed him. It was a brief kiss, no tongue, just a quick, chaste brush of his mouth to Brandon's. He wasn't ready for a full-fledged makeout session in the middle of campus, even if there was no one in sight.

Brandon licked his lips and looked away again, pulling his chin free of Shannon's grasp with a sharp jerk of his head. Sharp spots of color lit his cheeks. In a subdued voice, after he visibly swallowed a couple of times, he said, "Let's go. If we don't hurry, we'll miss the movie."

Shannon wondered if he'd done something wrong. He'd hoped for at least a smile -- but Brandon's expression was sober now, without even a sarcastic grin touching that sensual mouth. The twinkle of merriment had disappeared from his eyes, too.

Shannon touched his shoulder as he started to turn towards the direction of the theater. "Wait. I'm sorry."

"For what?" Brandon sounded clearly confused.

"I -- for getting annoyed, just now. For snapping at you. For being a jerk, I guess."

"C'mon. We can talk and walk at the same time." Brandon suited motion to words. "Shannon, for once, you're not being a jerk. It's just ... I'm scared."

"Me too."

"No, you don't understand, Shannon." Brandon shook his head. "You say you like me enough to -- to come out of the closet. You say you like me enough that I'm the _first_guy you've ever considered dating, even though I know you like guys just as much as the next queer."

Shannon snorted.

"You're sort've putting me up on a pedestal. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why you like me _that _much. And that makes me worried that you're making a mistake and when you get to really know me ..." Brandon trailed off. He shook his head, and continued to hitch himself along down the sidewalk.

Shannon slid his hands into his pockets. Brandon was being painfully honest -- but then, Brandon wasn't one to lie either to himself, or others. And he was pretty sure they'd had this discussion before, more than once. After a moment, he said, "I guess we'll both just have to see what the future holds."

Brandon glanced over at him. In the light of a streetlamp that overhung the sidewalk, Shannon saw a real, genuine smile touch his lips. "Guess we will. -- Hey, there's Kenshin!"

They'd reached the street that separated campus from a cluster of shops, restaurants and movie theaters. Across the street, Kenshin's hair was a gleaming banner of red under the bright lights in front of a stand selling coffee. He was in line with Carrie, and a girl that Shannon had never met.

"Kenny!" Brandon waved one crutch in the air.

Kenshin looked up, smiled, and waved back. A minute later, they'd crossed the street, just as the cashier at the coffee stand handed Kenshin three cups of coffee.

He handed a frothy, sugary-looking frozen confection to the strange girl, a cappucino to Carrie, and sipped what appeared to be a cup of black coffee for himself. "They make good coffee," he said, approvingly. "Brandon, Shannon, this is Morgan. Morgan, these are two of my and Carrie's classmates."

"Hi," the girl said, and then slurped up a mouthful of her frozen drink.

Shannon eyed the coffee stand. Had he been dating a girl, he would have offered to buy her a drink. He realized he had no idea what the protocol was where men were concerned -- he was in completely uncharted territory.

"Want anything?" Brandon said, balancing on one cane and digging in his pocket for his wallet.

"Umm. I can buy my own."

That got him a raised eyebrow. "You still haven't found a job."

"Okay, but I'm buying the movie tickets. My mom sent me some money." Shannon felt weirdly embarrassed. He didn't like it when girls bought things for him; somehow, it was _worse_that it was a guy. He was still analyzing why, exactly, that was when he realized Brandon had said something.

"Umm, what?"

"I said, 'works for me.' What's your poison?"

"Coffee?" Shannon managed to force out. Then he realized, given this was a coffee stand in Seacouver, he needed to be a bit more specific. "A cappucino, I guess. With skim milk."

Brandon calmly handed the cashier a ten dollar bill for their purchase, and pocketed the change. It was an utterly normal exchange, except that Shannon was majorly wigging. _A guy just bought something for me. A guy I like. Who likes me. _Then Carrie said something to Brandon and they moved a bit off -- Shannon heard them discussing something in one of her classes. Brandon had taken the class the year before; he was a med student too, though he wanted to go into research.

Shannon was still standing there, rather stupidly, trying to figure out exactly how he felt about that -- he'd always prided himself on being a bit old fashioned, and paying for everything on his dates with women. With an allowance in the four figures every month from his father, it had only seemed right. Plus, he just _liked _being chivalrous and charming and manly.

The cashier leaned forward across the counter and said, with a little giggle, "Brandon's such a sweetie."

_Oh. She knows him. _Shannon blinked at her, processing that. He supposed that wasn't any surprise; he vaguely remembered seeing the girl selling coffee there last year too.

She continued, "I'm glad to see him dating again."

Shannon wanted to sink into the floor.

The girl, eyes crinkling as she smiled, added, "I think he's adorable."

"Um, yeah. He is."

Apparently, that was the right answer, because the girl giggled louder. _Oh, shit, she thinks I'm gay. So she's doing that thing girls do with gay men, where they joke and laugh about hot guys. _He wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. He just wasn't ready to deal with this.

"Though the redhead is pretty cute too," she propped both elbows on the counter now while the cappucino machine hissed and burbled behind her. The rest of the group had moved a little farther away. Brandon was laughing, head thrown back, at something Kenshin had said.

"That's Kenny Myojin. The tall girl with him is his girlfriend." Shannon paused, then added, in defense of his masculinity, "Lucky, lucky man."

Feeling a bit better about having established, _Look! Look! Not entirely gay here! _to the cashier, he hurried over to join them. And he reflected, the girl was right -- Kenshin _was_pretty cute. Unfortunately, he was also complete and absolutely straight, as evidenced by the shining look in his eyes when he glanced over at Carrie.

"Hey guys," Shannon said, trying for casual.

"Glad you could join us," Brandon said. "Did we lose you there, for a moment?"

"Shut up, nimwit." Shannon replied automatically.

"Haven't you figured out yet that shutting me up would require superglue and a sedative?" Brandon smirked at him. "They're going to see the same movie we are. Want to make a double date -- and friend," he nodded to Morgan, "of it?"

"Uh ..."

"You're _gay_?" Morgan squeaked, her eyes going wide. She took a step back and bumped into Carrie.

"I am," Brandon smirked at her. But Shannon caught an edge to his words, however, and that grin was definitely not reaching his eyes. His eyes were narrowed and hard. "The handsome guy dating me hasn't decided for sure yet."

Carrie rested a hand on Morgan's shoulder. "Don't worry, Morgan. Gay's not catching."

"I _know _that." Morgan folded her arms. She suddenly looked sullen. "Kenshin, you said it would be just me and you and Carrie."

"Yes," Kenshin said, sounding unnaturally calm to Shannon's ears. But then, Kenshin had a certain talent for zen. "I did. But Brandon and Shannon are a lot of fun, and had I known they were going to see the movie tonight earlier, I would have asked them to join us then."

The girl _pouted_. Her lower lip actually stuck out. "My parents wouldn't approve of me going anywhere with them."

Brandon snapped, "Haven't you ever heard of youthful rebellion? -- C'mon, Shannon. Let's go. I don't think Ken and Carrie's friend wants anything to do with us."

"Wait!" Carrie said, sounding truly distressed, as Brandon turned to leave. "Brandon, wait! Don't listen to her, she's just being an idiot."

"I'm NOT AN IDIOT!" Not only could Morgan pout, she could shriek, too.

"A little louder, please," Kenshin said, in the same calm tone. "This one isn't quite sure he believes you. Perhaps if you scream louder, you might succeed in convincing me that you're not being foolish."

Morgan shut her mouth with a snap. Brandon stared at the red-headed man, one cane comically poised in mid-air. He had clearly not been expecting that level of sarcasm to come from Kenshin, who was generally utterly and absolutely polite and kind to everyone. Shannon himself was a little surprised -- but only a little. Kenshin was remarkably astute, and he had just put Morgan thoroughly in her place, without ever raising his own voice or saying anything unduly cruel.

Shannon cleared his throat. Everyone then stared at him, which wasn't exactly the most comfortable position to be in. However, he forged ahead, "Morgan, you know, Brandon has a point. Sometimes it's okay to disagree with your parents, even if you love them. Brandon's a pretty nice guy ..."

"... gee, thanks, I'll remember you said that ..." Brandon growled. "Just pretty nice?"

"Shut up, asswipe." Shannon wasn't in any mood for Brandon's mouth at the moment. Couldn't Brandon see that the snark was counterproductive here? "Brandon's not a bad guy, anyway."

Morgan folded her arms. "Kenshin promised to take _me _to the movies."

_Eesh. Maturity level of about, oh, a three year old. She doesn't want to share Kenshin with us. _

Kenshin said, in the same utterly calm tone, "Morgan, do you want me to treat you like an adult or a child?"

She pouted. "Adult."

"How do you think an adult would act if their friend met other friends while out at the movies?"

Morgan folded her arms and muttered, "I just want you to be my friend."

Kenshin nodded. "And if you're rude to my other friends, do you think that will make me inclined to like you?"

She pouted and said nothing.

Kenshin rested a hand on her arm, and looked up at her. "Morgan, how do you think an adult would act right now?"

"They'd be polite. Politer." She looked embarrassed now. In a tiny voice she said, "Sorry."

"It's not me you need to apologize too. I believe you were being rude to my friends not because you have an issue with their sexuality, but because it was an excuse to try to drive them away. Am I right?" Kenshin's voice tone was utterly, absolutely, completely gentle. Shannon was impressed; he'd never heard anyone be quite that convincingly sincerely.

_If I said those exact same words to that girl, she'd blow up. You just can't rage at Kenshin, however. He's too nice. _

Brandon's eyebrows had vanished up under his bangs. He shot Shannon a bemused look, then turned his attention back to Morgan when she said, "I'm sorry. Your boyfriend's right. I don't need to agree with my parents. Shit, they're idiots anyway. So I'm sorry I was mean to you."

_Boyfriend_? Shannon thought wildly.

"Eh. Sometimes I'm an idiot too." Brandon shifted his weight from one crutch to the other, took his hand out of the grip, and offered her his fingers to shake. "Let's try this again. My name's Brandon. And the hunk there who's about to explode because he wants to deny the 'boyfriend' comment is Shannon. He's just a friend, I'm afraid."

"Oh."

Brandon grinned. "But we're dating."

"And if you haven't guessed," Shannon said, "Brandon thinks making people squirm is a sport."

"KENSHIN!" Someone shouted behind them, and followed that with rapid-fire Japanese.

Kenshin spun on his heels, hand dropping to his waist, other hand crossing over to hover over what Shannon assumed was a sword he couldn't see, and his knees bending a bit. It was an aggressive crouch, completely and totally at odds with the smiling, friendly Kenshin that Shannon had known before. His eyes were narrowed, and he practically radiated aggression.

Carrie, beside him, had her hand slipped inside her duster and was in a similarly hostile pose.

"Sasaki-sensei," Kenshin growled, as the running figure skidded to a halt next to them. Shannon had never heard Kenshin hit that particular note of unfriendliness; he was shocked. Kenshin had mentioned Sasaki with fondness, in the past.

"Kenshin!"

_Kenshin. He knows Kenshin's real name. _

"You've got to get out of here. Now!" Sasaki looked over his shoulder.

"What?"

"Just _go_. They're after Morgan!"

"K'su!" Kenshin hissed. "We'll go to the theater and call the cops ..."

Morgan had gone pale, almost green.

"The people after her are bad news!" Sasaki shook his head violently. "Get her _out _of here. I'll explain later. _Go_. They're planning a hit!"

"Shannon, Brandon, go home." Kenshin said, in a voice of absolute command. "You don't want to be involved in this ..."

A dark car pulled up on the curb next to them. The window started to roll down. Sasaki swore, and leaped for Morgan, throwing his arms up and putting his body between the girl and the car. In the same instant, Kenshin made a sudden, violent movement with his hands.

Shannon saw something glitter in a blindingly fast arc towards the car, just as a hand holding a gun was leveled at Morgan. The muzzle flashed simultaneous with Kenshin's sword connecting with the hit man's forehead.

Sasaki grunted.

The sword clattered to the ground. Kenshin lunged for it in a rolling motion,

Carrie, somehow, had managed to teleport a good twenty feet to the side of the car. She swung _her _sword in a whistling arc at the car's tire. It burst in a shower of shreds of black rubber. She kept moving, thrusting the sword through the open passenger window, across to the driver's side, and into the steering column, which splintered. The airbag deployed with a loud _crack. _

Kenshin, meanwhile, had bounded across the hood of the car, leaving foot-sized dents in the metal. He landed on the driver's side, exploded the window with a swift strike of steel, and then pressed the tip of the sword to the driver's throat. "Do not move. I will not kill you, but I have no issue with leaving any man who would shoot a teenaged girl crippled and with permanent scars."

The driver slowly raised his hands. A gun dangled from one of them. He dropped the gun.

The passenger groaned, shoved the door open, and vomited groggily onto the street.

Carrie, face twisted into an expression of keen disgust, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him out. He staggered to the curb and collapsed, where he sat with his head in his hands, groaning. He had a rapidly swelling purple mark on his forehead.

"This man's shot!" Morgan suddenly screamed.

Kenshin shoved the driver towards the curb. He had naked steel in one hand, and a furiously angry look on his face. "Sit."

The man sat.

Kenshin put his sword away. It disappeared. Shannon saw Carrie's sword was gone as well. Sword ... he'd seen a sword, right?

He blinked, certain he had, but somehow, no longer quite _as _certain.

_Swords. Immortals. _He reminded himself.

"He's shot!"

Brandon had moved over to Mr. Sasaki, who had one hand clamped over a gunshot wound in his arm. Blood was pouring through his fingers. He also had blood on his lips, and he coughed as Shannon watched. Pink froth bubbled from his mouth.

_It went through his arms into his lung. Shit. _

Brandon shouted, "Shannon! I need your help here!"

Right. Help. Injured teacher.

Sasaki said thickly, "You boys should not get involved in this. There may be more ..."

Kenshin had a cell phone to his ear. "... shooting. Yeah. One man's shot, my teacher."

_Calling the police. Kenshin would; he's big on laws and justice. _Shannon had no doubt that Kenshin would want to handle this _within _the law.

"Shannon!" Brandon was trying to lower himself to the ground. "Need your help here, buddy."

"He's shot!" Morgan insisted.

Brandon's feet slipped out from underneath him when he was a few feet from the ground. He caught himself with one hand, collapsing somewhat awkwardly next to Sasaki. Then he stripped off his t-shirt and shoved it at the man's arm.

"You two should leave ..." Sasaki insisted.

"He's right." Kenshin joined them. "Sasaki-sensei, you're shot in the lung. You need to lay down. The paramedics are on the way."

Sasaki stared dumbly at him.

Shannon fished in his pockets and found a folding Swiss army knife -- one with a decent blade. He and Kenshin encouraged the teacher to lay back. He could hear Morgan sobbing hysterically in the back ground.

"Sasaki-sensei," Kenshin took the knife from Shannon's hand and cut the man's shirt off. "You're going to live. You'll be okay. This one has seen a lot of injuries in his life; yours is not mortal."

Brandon had pulled his wallet out -- Shannon wasn't sure what he was doing until he grabbed the knife from Kenshin and cut it open, exposing the plastic liner inside the pocket for the bills. He shoved his credit card and money back into his pocket and the slid across the ground to the teacher and pressed the inside liner against the wound in Sasaki's chest, sealing it. "Ken, keep pressure on that. Keep the air from getting in."

Kenshin clapped a hand over the remains of Brandon's wallet. "Shannon, check Morgan, will you? Sasaki doesn't have an exit wound, so I don't think she's shot, but she's so hysterical right now she might not feel it."

_Check the screaming, hysterical girl. Right. _

He walked over to her. "Hey. You shot?"

She was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, sobbing wildly, hands balled at her side, eyes scrunched closed.

"Morgan." He touched her hesitantly. "Look at me."

She shook her head frantically. "They were trying to kill me!"

He gently turned her around, looking for blood. There was no sign of any injury. "Shh. You're okay."

"They shot that man!"

"Sshhh, shhh," he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "You're okay. You're not hurt."

"He saved my life. I don't even know who he is! He saved my life!"

The girl in his arms was shaking, violently. "Why? I don't deserve it! _Why_?"

"Shhh."

He could see over her shoulder, at the others. Carrie was supervising the two hit men; she looked supremely pissed and deadly dangerous. Kenshin was keeping pressure on Sasaki's chest wound; Brandon had both hands clamped around his shattered, heavily bleeding arm.

"He's going to die!" Morgan wailed.

"No he's not," Shannon said, tightening his grip on the girl. "Kenshin said he's going to live. He's going to be okay, Morgan. Shhh."

In a tiny voice, she said, "... I don't even know who he is. And he saved my life. He saved my life."

Smaller still, she whispered, "He saved my_baby_."


	23. Chapter 23

It was late -- very late. Or very early, depending on how one looked at it. Dawn was only a few hours away. He had class tomorrow, but he thought he might skip. Shannon sat crosslegged on his bed, back to the wall, staring out at the moon through his bedroom window. He couldn't sleep; he was too wired, too full of late-night coffee and far too worried about Sasaki.

Kenshin had turned on the charm when the cops had arrived. Shannon had been personally convinced that both Kenshin and Carrie would be arrested because of the swords. Instead, Kenshin had explained that he and Carrie were martial arts experts and that they had been taking the swords to a practice session at a dojo when Morgan had been attacked. It was not, apparently, illegal to own a sword in Seacouver. Nor was it illegal to defend oneself when attacked by using deadly force.

Before the cops had arrived, Kenshin had very quickly and very efficiently established that cover story with them, including that they planned to ride the bus to the dojo -- they weren't far from a bus stop. This neatly explained the fact that they'd been attacked while on foot.

It was a lie, but a plausible one. Kenshin had apologized profusely for asking them to tell an untruth, but Shannon figured they all knew that the real truth would be harder for the cops to swallow, and would put many people's lives at risk. And, to his amusement, Kenshin had mentioned Mac's dojo, and Officer Green had suddenly rolled his eyes and said, "Oh. MacLeod. We know Mac."

Apparently this "Mac" was notorious with the police.

The gunmen had been arrested, though the one with the concussion would likely spend time in the hospital prior to being taken time to jail. The cops had been vastly amused that two "kids with swords" had taken out a pair mafia hitmen. And they _were_hitmen -- one of the men was on a most-wanted list in the United States.

Sasaki had been whisked away in an ambulance. Kenshin had sounded convinced he would be fine; Shannon had seen the concern on the face of the paramedics and wondered if Kenshin's supreme calm was experience with grave injuries sustained during battle or was simply an attempt to reassure the others. Or both.

Kenshin had been completely truthful to the cops about why Morgan was staying in Seacouver; she had quickly been taken away into police protective custody, with Kenshin and Carrie accompanying her. Shannon had been shocked to overhear Kenshin's explanation of just why the girl was in Seacouver. And one of the cops, Officer Green -- the same cop who'd helped them after the accident a couple weeks before -- had muttered rude things about Morgan not being offered protective custody prior to this point. He had stated he would _personally _see that she was safe until departing for England on Thursday.

That had left Shannon to see Brandon home. Brandon had gone to his room, and now Shannon was completely alone.

He rose, walked to his fridge, and took out one of the beers that he technically wasn't supposed to have on campus. He wasn't much for drinking, but getting rousingly drunk and passing out seemed like a possible way to shut the turmoil up in his head.

_Sasaki didn't even know that girl but he took a bullet for her._

_Kenshin is defending a girl he barely knows. It could get him killed._

There was more to that story. Shannon decided he would ask Kenshin about it later; he didn't know if Kenshin would answer his questions, however.

_And my idea of courage? Is to ask Brandon out._

_Brandon, who jumped right into the fray, knew what to do, knew how to act, and never lost his cool._

_What did I do? I stood around holding the girl. _

It sort've put things in perspective.

He eyed the beer without opening it. Fifteen minutes later, he was still staring at the label -- it was a Corona -- when someone knocked softly at his door.

Shannon swore. At one AM in the morning, likely it was trouble -- someone sick, someone dangerously intoxicated, a fight between roommates. Three nights ago he'd had to call the cops because dispute between rooms -- one with a drunken party, the neighboring room with students who wanted to sleep -- had threatened to turn violent.

_Michael, of course, was in the drunken room. _

He scratched himself through his sweats, then opened the door. "Yeah ... oh, Brandon?"

"I'm sorry if I woke you," Brandon said, diffidently. His eyes seemed a little unfocused. "I couldn't sleep and, um, I was -- Danny went over to his girlfriend's and I kinda ... well, it was bugging me. Being alone."

"I wasn't asleep." Shannon stepped back and gestured for him to come in. "Do you want to crash here for the rest of the night?"

Brandon hesitated "Do you mind?"

"To tell the truth, I was having a hard time sleeping. Want a beer?" Shannon held up the Corona.

Brandon shook his head. "I took a bunch of pain killers earlier. Not a good idea."

"Pain killers?"

"Wrenched my back." Brandon made a face. Shannon realized the slightly glazed look on Brandon's face was because of medication. "I think when I sat down next to Sasaki on the sidewalk."

"Yeah, you hit the pavement pretty hard. I'm sorry, I think I was in shock ... I could have helped you down ..." Guilt stabbed at him, because he'd stood around in stunned disbelief while Brandon had taken action. Shannon set the unopened beer down on his desk, and gestured at the bed. "Sit down."

Brandon gave him a wary glance and remained standing for a long moment before he lowered himself to the bed. He did so awkwardly; any automatic and cynical suspicion Shannon might have had about the use of painkillers to dull emotional rather than physical pain was instantly settled. By the way he moved, Shannon could tell he was hurting a bit even after drugging himself.

He leaned over and helped Brandon swing his legs up onto the bed. At least he remembered to help now. "Take your shirt off and lay down on your stomach."

"Huh?" Brandon stared at him. Shannon couldn't help but think those blue eyes, rimmed with very long lashes, were beautiful.

"Roll over. I give a pretty good massage, you know." Of course, he'd never massaged a _guy _before. Girlfriends, yes. Lots of girlfriends.

"Oh." Brandon again hesitated, then complied. He pillowed his head on his arms, baring a muscular upper back.

Shannon started at his shoulders, a chaste, careful rubdown. _This is the biggest cliché in the book, of course,_Shannon thought, acidly. _Ten minutes from now we're going to be fucking like billy goats on Viagra. _Not _happening. He's too stoned and too hurting, and I am so not ready for that, anyway. _

Brandon winced when Shannon's fingers reached his lower spine. Shannon could _feel _the muscles tense and quiver in reaction to his gentle touch. Brandon groaned -- it was a very pained sound, not a good sort of groan at all -- and made fists. He stopped. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Brandon said. "Keep rubbing. It will help, I think."

"I've got some liniment in the bathroom, hold on."

He returned with the rather strong-smelling mentholated salve. Brandon made a face, but didn't protest when Shannon rubbed it into his skin. Beneath Shannon's fingers, he could feel scars on either side of Brandon's spine, and he could see thin white lines of old incisions in the skin, as well.

"You had surgery?" Brandon asked.

"Several times, yeah, when I was a baby and a little kid." Brandon sighed. "To repair the birth defects in my spine, and again later, when I was sixteen, because my spinal cord was being pinched ... and then two years ago I slipped a disk ... That actually feels pretty good, Shannon."

"Mmmm." Shannon could feel the muscles loosening up. "Whenever you get like this, come see me."

"Yeah, that sounds like a very good idea." Brandon sighed a happy sigh. "I think I'm going to fall asleep if you keep that up."

He worked in silence for ten more minutes, until he could feel that Brandon was utterly relaxed under his touch. Then he climbed over him on the bed and stretched out beside him. Brandon went said in a slow, somehow _interested _voice, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to fuck you senseless -- _nitwit,_I'm going to sleep. It's late. You're welcome to stay if want."

He truly didn't mind the thought at all of Brandon in his bed, though he had fairly platonic intentions. However, Brandon was silent, for a long moment before he sat up. Shannon thought he was leaving but all Brandon did was unbuckle his braces and drop them over the edge of the bed. Then, without warning, or permission, Brandon hitched himself over and snuggled up against him, throwing one arm over Shannon's chest, cheek resting on his shoulder.

"Thank you," Brandon whispered. His words were a bit slurred. "For letting me stay."

"I invited you in, didn't I?" Shannon growled, but he found himself reaching up to turn off the light on the dresser beside the bed. He didn't want to be alone either. He reached down and yanked the covers up over both of them.

--------------

There were two cops seated at the hotel room's table. Kenshin could feel their wary ki; could sense them moving about occasionally. One was Officer Green, a pool of calm focus; the other was a smaller, younger woman, Sally, with way too much energy for a time that was just minutes before dawn. Sally was pacing the room restlessly and he could smell the hotel's complimentary coffee brewing. Even bad coffee was supposed to smell good ... this didn't.

The police department had rented them a suite under an assumed name; one room for Carrie and Morgan, and one room for himself, with a kitchenette in the middle. It was a bargain-rate hotel in a bad neighborhood, suite notwithstanding, but Kenshin had a reasonable amount of faith in the police department to provide them protection, at least until he could get Morgan somewhere safe. He could sense they meant well -- and Kenshin genuinely liked Green. The man seemed to have integrity.

Kenshin sat crosslegged on his bed, watching the sun rise. He'd dozed for a few minutes, back to the wall, very lightly, the very bare minimum of sleep needed to function. Now he forced himself to stay awake. He had faith in the cops to be honest and professional, but he also realized now that he had not been taking the threat against Morgan seriously enough. He was keeping watch in his own way, waiting for trouble.

His door creaked open. He looked up, as Carrie slipped through. "You're awake."

"Aa."

"Morgan's finally asleep. She cried herself out."

Carrie sat down on the bed beside him, tucked her knees to her chest, and said, "It must be terrible for her. She's sixteen and people are trying to kill her just because of something she saw."

Kenshin nodded. "It is not an easy thing. Carrie, I am oathsworn to keep her safe and I have been remiss on that oath."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going away." He bowed his head. "I've already spoken to my accountant, and my contacts for creating a new identity. I'm going to set up a cover for myself, and for her. We will go somewhere where she can be safe until the trial -- which, George informs me, likely won't be for several more months. I know that I have said that I will protect you, as well, but you have completely proven to this one that you are quite capable of defending yourself."

"But your classes!" she protested, instantly, as if she had been expecting he might make this statement. "Kenshin, no! That's not fair."

He heard the tears in her voice, but he could not bring himself to look at her. "This one is very sorry."

"I will come with you, then!"

He had known she would say that. He turned to her, then, and said quietly, "You have classes, Carrie-dono. You have an education you must complete."

"But Kenshin ..."

"Your parents have made sacrifices to see you in college. You have been accepted to medical school, which is an enormous accomplishment and honor. It would be wrong of you to disappoint them, Carrie-dono. Additionally, _I _want to see you succeed -- and you would not be where you are if _you _did not want to be a doctor as well."

"But ..."

He was seriously concerned she would try to follow him. He knew Carrie -- and Kaoru before her -- and following directions was not her greatest strength. He said quietly, "Carrie-dono, this is not forever, or even for very long."

"But I'll miss you." She hugged herself and looked away. She wouldn't meet his eyes and he saw tears glistening in her eyelashes. "I know this is something you must do, Kenshin. Just know that I'll miss you."

He knew she would have a meltdown later. He knew he'd just hurt her, very badly. Not intentionally, or willfully, but he had.

"Carrie," he said quietly, resting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

She sniffled and still wouldn't meet his eyes. He knew she didn't want to sob in front of him. With acute pain, he remembered Kaoru's tears when he had turned his back and walked away from her. Then, they had both believed he was leaving forever. This was not forever, but they also didn't know how long it would be for.

"Atsuko used to leave me, you know." Kenshin said, quietly, trying to find words to make it better. "I hurt, each time she left. She had a career, and a calling that was very important to her. She wanted to make the world a better place. She believed in what she did -- and so did I. But every time she left, and headed into danger, and left me behind, it _hurt_. Gods, it hurt. And I worried about her safety and I missed her so very much. I _know _you are hurting, Carrie, and I understand why and how very much, because I have been there. And I also know that because you _do _understand why I must do this, you will not seek to stop me ... but it feels as if your heart is breaking and the loneliness will overwhelm you, does it not?"

"I know that you understand," she said, quietly, looking down at her hands. Her face was stricken, despite her masterful efforts at trying to remain collected and calm.

He recalled that Karou had, in the past, been prone to fits of depressive misery. Not often, but it was in her nature to dwell on things. He had been very dismayed, upon returning from Kyoto and Shishio, to learn that her response to his leaving had been to go to bed and not get up for days. He was suddenly worried about how she was going to react once he was gone. He said, somewhat urgently, "Carrie, you must find things to occupy your mind while I am away. Your schoolwork. Your friends. Keep in training at the dojo. Go to parties with Margaret and the movies with Shannon and Brandon. Spar with MacLeod or Richie. And the time will be faster and I will be back before you know it."

She sighed. "How long? Where will you go?"

"I don't know." He hesitated for a long moment, thinking his words through. He finally decided on blunt honesty. "I will keep in touch, but I am not going to tell you where I'm staying." That was for two reasons; one was to protect everyone involved, and the second was because he frankly didn't trust Carrie not to try to follow him.

"I would never tell anyone ..." She looked up at him, eyes huge and very hurt. She was more wounded than he'd expected.

"I know, but I also know you, Carrie-dono. You're far too likely to come after me, that you are, if I tell you were I'm going," he said, with complete and total honesty. He rested a hand on her arm, and tried to make her understand. "I do not want you to do so."

"Mou! Kenshin! I wouldn't, not if you asked me not to!" Angrily, she sat upright, yanking free of his grip. Heatedly, she glared at him. If looks could kill, he would have been a dead Immortal.

"And this one completely believes that." Teasing, perhaps, might make her smile.

"Well, I'd have to have a good reason ..." Some, but not all, of the outrage faded from her eyes. The anger morphed into grief and a good bit of self-doubt before his eyes.

"Your reason would be excellent." Kenshin paused, then decided there was absolutely nothing he could say to make her feel better, and that he had no inclination to change his decision. He forged ahead, "You will be able to reach me by e-mail and my cell phone, Carrie-dono. If it's truly critical that I know something, you will be able to tell me. And we'll talk on the phone, of course."

"Of course," she said, faintly. He thought for a moment that she might begin to cry, but she simply straightened up, spine stiffening, jaw set so hard that he could see the muscles of her cheeks bulge. There were no tears in her eyes, none of the hysterics that he had been dreading.

He reached a hand out, tucked a stray curl behind her ear, and said, "I love you very much and I do not think I could bear it if anything happens to you. I only want you to be safe."

She was silent and she wouldn't meet his eyes. He sensed resentment from her. He suddenly regretted the decision not to tell her of his destination; he knew it was a misstep in his relationship with her. However, even if she was angry with him, he decided he had to do whatever needed to be done to keep her safe, and in school, and working towards her future. He met her eyes and brushed that rebellious lock of dark, tightly curled hair back for the second time. "I am sorry, Carrie."

He expected her to shout at him. To claim he didn't trust her, or to hit him, or to throw things at him. Kaoru would have ... no, Kaoru would _not _have, he decided, on second thought. Minor offenses warranted a big fuss from Kaoru. Like Carrie, she didn't talk about the bigger things that concerned her.

"You think I'm a child." She finally spoke. There was hurt in her voice to match the pain in her eyes. He mentally winced, but decided his best course was utter honesty with her. She might not like it, but he was unwilling to handle this any other way.

After a moment's thought on the most tactful way to sooth her wounded feelings, he said, "If I thought you were a_child_, Carrie, I would not be leaving you behind to look out for yourself in a world where people would see you dead for the power of your Quickening." Again, that springy curl slid free from behind her ear. He stroked it, fingers sliding through her glossy hair. "Your father asked me to protect you, but I find you are a capable woman who does not need my protection."

She huffed an aggravated sigh. "Kenshin ..."

He touched his fingers to her lips. "I'm leaving Thursday afternoon."

"I feel terrible about your classes."

"Aa." That _hurt. _Would he never have a chance for a normal life? "Speaking of which, it's almost time for you to head off to school."

She hugged him, suddenly, surprising him. "Gods. I've had absolutely no sleep. I'm going to be trashed."

Her words were light, too casual.

"You're twenty. You'll survive." He said this with a little amusement.

She absently brushed that loose curl behind her ear -- it promptly sprang free, to his very private amusement. She impatiently caught it, ripped her entire pony tail free of its scrunchy, and redid her hair with absent, annoyed gestures.

A curl was now loose on the other side of her head.

"You missed one," he pointed it out by tugging at it. He, too, was trying to be normal. Things weren't normal between them, but they could fake it.

"Mou! I _hate _my hair."

"Turn around," he said, and when she did so, he efficiently finger-combed the worst of the tangles out of her unruly locks and then pulled everything back into her customary poofy ponytail. He judged the results satisfactory for school; he _liked_to see her hair just a little bit messy. It suited her. "There. You look fine, Carrie-dono."

"My eyes are probably all red."

"You look _fine_."

"You're really good at hair."

"I've babysat more small children than I could care to count," Kenshin said, with a smile. "Would you prefer pigtails?"

She snorted. He was glad he had managed to provoke her into a little bit of indignation. That felt more like Carrie. She said, with too-brash cheer, "Idiot! Okay, fine. I'm off to class. Call my cell phone if anything comes up or you find out how Sasaki's doing, though, will you?"

"Aa. I will."

She stared at him for a moment. There was still hurt in her blue eyes, and he realized that despite his best efforts that she was still probably going to break down and cry once she was away from him. There was nothing he was willing to do that would make her feel any better.

------------------

Shannon woke to the awareness that he was being watched. He lifted his head from his pillow, half-asleep brain thinking, _Girl in the bed? Was I drunk last night?_

The smell of Brandon's aftershave, and the mentholated liniment, and underneath it, the odor of _man_, filled his nostrils. He lifted his head and met Brandon's gaze from several inches away. Brandon looked wide awake, though his hair was standing on end. He was still snuggled up against Shannon, one arm across Brandon's chest.

"G'morning," Brandon said, "You know that you drool when you sleep?"

"I also talk in my sleep, and my last girlfriend claimed she could carry on complete conversations with me." When Brandon removed his arm, he propped himself up on his elbow and looked at his alarm clock. It was almost noon.

"It buzzed," Brandon said, "You cussed it out. So I turned it off."

"I have no memory of this." Shannon flopped back onto his pillow. "How's your back?"

"Down to half a hydrocodone and some ibuprofen. Last night was an oyxcontin night." He gestured at the bedside table; Shannon looked over to see that there was a pill bottle there. Either Brandon had brought the bottle with him or he'd gone and fetched it sometime during the night.

A trace of worry crossed Brandon's blue eyes. "You understand that the pills are the only way I can function sometimes, right? Some people automatically think I abuse them when they find out I take narcotics. I _hate _them, I hate having a fuzzy head, but I hate hurting even more."

"Your -- problems. They make your back hurt?"

Brandon nodded. "I've got a TENS unit too, but it doesn't seem to work all that well for me. The pills -- I don't take them unless I have to. The doctor's always telling me I can take more, actually. But I don't want to end up a druggy. I figure if I always take less than the doctor says I can, I'm safer."

Shannon had no idea what a tens unit was, but somehow, he doubted Brandon was any sort of a drug abuser. And he said so. "I can't see you addicted to anything. You're too stubborn."

"Gee, thanks." Brandon reached down and yanked the covers over his head. Since he was still curled up against Shannon, with his head resting on Shannon's shoulder, this meant that the blanket flopped over Shannon's face as well. "Mm going back to sleep."

Shannon shoved the blanket down so that he could breath. Brandon reminded him of a six-foot two cat -- all long limbs, lanky and lean, and he sort've _oozed _across Shannon's chest. One spindly leg was thrown over Shannon's knees, as well. For someone who professed to be in pain, he was remarkably relaxed. Then again, he'd mentioned narcotics.

"Do you always cuddle with your friends?" Shannon said, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious.

"Only those I want to fuck with."

"Brandon ..."

"Shut up." Brandon's voice was a little muffled by the blanket. "Don't say it. Don't send me away. Please. I don't think I could bear it. Not after last night."

Shannon stroked Brandon's head through the blanket. "You're a nitwit, you know that?"

"That's what you are, what am I?" Brandon said, in a very nasal voice.

Shannon snorted -- he would have laughed, except that he didn't want to encourage Brandon to come up with more Peewee Herman quotes. Where, he wondered, had Brandon found Peewee Herman? They apparently had similar tastes in television, but that was a rather obscure thirty-year old show. "I'm not going to shove you away."

"We still haven't even accomplished one date, so it's probably a bit soon for sex," Brandon muttered. He pushed the covers back down and lifted his head, and looked Shannon in the eyes. "I'd suggest trying again tonight, but that might be testing fate. Plus, I have an anatomy test on Friday and I've _got_to start studying for it or I'll flunk it. And anyway, all that means I won't have any time for us, and I suppose we should put of anything, because I know you're not ready anyway ..." He was talking without actually breathing between sentences.

"Brandon, honey, slow down ..." Shannon stumbled to a halt. _Honey. _It was an endearment one would use towards a woman, not a man. Well, he supposed a gay man _could _call his sweetheart with that sort of term, but he was _not _that sort of man. Probably.

Suddenly, he felt a little sense of loss. He'd always_liked _endearments. He had been unabashedly cutesy with his last girlfriend. Somehow, he couldn't quite see calling Brandon "honey-cakes" or "sweetie-pea" ... it would be a very different sort of relationship, he guessed, than any he'd been in before. The dynamics would change from everything he was used to.

Brandon was _not _a cute girl who he could dote on and call sappy endearments and give stuffed animals and boxes of chocolates too. Brandon was snarky and sarcastic, and about as sappy as a cactus.

And yet, Shannon felt almost as if something in his soul was _completed _when he was with the man.

Brandon quirked one eyebrow upwards. "... honey?"

"Aargh. Sorry, Brandon." Shannon grabbed the covers and yanked them back up over his head to hide the fact that he was reasonably sure he was the color of a tomato. "I'm all sorts of confused by this. I wake with someone cuddling in my arms, pretty much, they've always been a pretty girl before, and pretty much, they've always been _honey_."

Brandon snickered. "A fine explanation, sweetheart."

"Gah." Shannon ran his free hand over his face. He needed a shave. His other arm -- the one under Brandon -- was falling asleep. He shifted, and managed to wrap that arm around Brandon's waist. More of Brandon ended up resting on top of Shannon, and Shannon decided he rather liked that. He asked, very softly, "You really want to make love with me?"

Brandon's snickers, which had continued as silently quivers with each breath, died abruptly. "Yeah. "

"Figured as much. I just didn't want to make a move on you last night, when you weren't sober, and you were hurting so bad," Shannon said, "I don't have any other plans for today."

"Alexander wouldn't ever cuddle with me," Brandon said, quietly.

"Huh?"

"Alex was my boyfriend. Two years ago, my first year in college. He wouldn't ever snuggle." Brandon put his head down on Shannon's shoulder and traced a circular pattern on Brandon's chest with one long finger. "He just ... he just wanted sex. He wanted me to blow him, mostly. I got pretty good at it."

"He was the one who cheated on you?" Shannon caught Brandon's hand and stilled it. The touch tickled a bit, but was also arousing. He wasn't sure he wanted to go there yet. Or maybe he did. Damn, he was so confused.

"Yeah," Brandon sighed, heavily. "And he was weird about things with me."

"Because you can't ..." _Impotent._Shannon had done a bit of reading on the internet; the sort of spinal birth defect that Brandon had often led to impotence. He suspected multiple back surgeries hadn't helped there, either. He couldn't bring himself to complete his sentence, however, much less ask such a personal question. He felt himself blushing.

"Yeah." Brandon sighed. "Shannon, don't tell me you don't mind. It's got to bother you."

"I guess it does, a bit."

"Thanks for being honest." Brandon tightened his grip on Shannon in a quick hug. "Alex always _lied_ about it. He always claimed he didn't care. That he loved me anyway. He was fucking lying. I tried so hard to make it work and he cheated on me ... and he'd never just _hold _me."

"His loss," Shannon said. Suddenly, he was very glad he hadn't pulled away from Brandon last night.

"You ... you know I came here hoping you wanted to fuck." Brandon rolled over, suddenly, getting free of Shannon's grip. He pushed himself upright and said, with his back to Shannon, "I was just stoned enough that having some fun with you sounded like a grand way to distract myself from the mess last night. Mind, I'm not sure I'd completely thought through the logistics, what with being in agony and all that, but anyway."

"Hnn." Shannon reached out and rubbed Brandon's back. "I may be kinda confused about some things, Brandon, but I'm real clear on this: I like my partners reasonably sober. And not in agony."

"Yeah." Brandon glanced back at him. "You just held me. You could've had me, and you chose to just hold me."

"I'm not sure you gave me much choice, about the holding bit."

"Oh." Brandon looked wounded. "I'm sorry."

"'S okay."

"I wouldn't have minded, y'know. If you had."

_Except that you were in so much pain you could barely move. _Shannon traced one of the pale surgical scars on Brandon's slim back. He wasn't sure if Brandon actually could have managed anything last night; some of this conversation was probably wishful thinking on the man's part. On the other hand, he got the feeling that Brandon had lived with pain his entire life. His tolerance for discomfort in the pursuit of pleasure was probably much higher than an ordinary person's. He finally simply said, "You're a lot more coherent now, and I'm not going anywhere today."

His heart started to race. He wasn't sure he was ready for this. Hell, if he lived to be a hundred years old, he wasn't sure he'd be ready for this. Somehow, a relationship with Brandon felt very different than that with any of the girls he'd ever known.

Brandon straightened up. He protested, "It's the middle of the day."

"Yeah. So?" Shannon sat up. "Weren't you the one intending to seduce me?"

"Yeah, last night."

"Oh, so now that you're sober, you're not interested?" Shannon was only partly teasing. Part of him hoped Brandon was going to turn him flatly down. Part of him was horrified by his actions. And a very big part of him was wondering if Brandon_had _only been interested in him 'that way' when he was stoned out of his gourd on narcotics.

And part of him wanted Brandon to turn around, smile at him, and accept the offer. It was, really, the biggest portion of his heart that was desiring that.

"I have condoms," he added. Because that was important.

Brandon's shoulders hunched. "Latex?"

"Yeah."

"I'm allergic. Really allergic. It's actually related to -- you know. People like me tend to be very allergic to latex and nobody knows why, exactly."

"Oh." Shannon poked him in the ribs, teasingly. "Has anyone ever told you that you've got problems?"

Brandon squirmed away from Shannon's fingers. "I think you're the first to notice."

"I could go out. Get the other kind of condom." It was an honest offer.

"I should get tested for stuff. I haven't been. Not since Alex cheated on me. He wouldn't, umm. With a condom. I was stupid. But I thought we would be forever." Brandon heaved a sigh. It sounded exaggerated, to Shannon's ears. "I don't want to give you anything." Brandon paused, then added, with a bit of wry humor, "They tend to look at me funny when I ask for STD testing."

Shannon snickered. "I take it that your reputation does not precede you into the doctor's office?"

"What reputation?" Brandon said, in an innocent voice. "We really should wait, though."

"Excuses, excuses," Shannon teased, though now he was worried. Brandon's reasons were quite valid, but he got a sense that the man was stalling. _He _had just had a checkup and knew he was clean. He wrapped an arm around Brandon's chest from behind and propped his chin on his shoulder. "Why don't we just go get breakfast, then? Unless you've plans for the day that don't involve skipping class."

"I kinda want to go to the hospital and visit Mr. Sasaki."

"Well, yeah. I figure we can do that this afternoon, after we eat. If they'll even let us see him. Besides, Kenshin said he'd call when he found anything out." Guilt stabbed at him -- should he be more obsessed over the teacher's fate? Kenshin had sounded so convinced that Sasaki would be fine. Kenshin would call them as soon as he found something out, too. He'd promised.

Shannon stood up and was heading for his mini fridge -- a Mountain Dew sounded remarkably good, maybe two of them -- when someone knocked on his door. He rolled his eyes and shouted at the person doing the knocking, "I'm off duty!"

"Shannon? There's some drunk chick in the lobby throwing up. I can't find David." He recognized the voice of the dorm's maintenance man. David was the RA who was supposed to be on duty during weekday mornings.

"Fuck. It's _Tuesday. _Who the hell gets drunk to the point of throwing up on a Tuesday? At _noon_?" He yanked open the door. He so did not want to deal with this at the moment. He had other worries.

Chuck -- the maintenance man -- stood there in his uniform and tool belt, with a power drill hanging from one hand. He looked past Shannon, saw Brandon, and his eyebrows rose.

Shannon glanced back and realized the impression Chuck had just gotten: Brandon was seated on the edge of his bed, dressed only in boxer shorts, one brace held in his hand, and with a great tangled mass of bedhead making his blond curls stand on end.

Brandon blinked. Said, "I just crashed here last night. I lost the key to my room."

"He's covering for me," Shannon said, heavily. He wasn't going to _lie _about this. He figured any relationship worth having, was worth having openly. "We're dating."

"Umm," Chuck said, looking a bit like a deer in the headlights. "That's cool. I'm cool with it. Are you going to take care of the drunk chick?"

"Meh. I'll deal with the girl, if you get the vomit." Shannon really hoped he wasn't going to have to clean up the puke. The dorm's cleaning lady came by in the early morning and was likely already gone for the day. If someone didn't clean it up, it would sit there and stink for the entire day.

To his relief, Chuck accepted, "Sounds like a deal. But she's puked all over herself, and you get to carry her to her room."

"Joy." Handling drunk coeds was one of his least favorite tasks. He'd never understood the appeal they held for the frat boys, either.

After he'd shut the door and yanked yesterday's t-shirt over his head -- no sense in wearing a clean shirt for this task -- Brandon said quietly, "Shannon, you didn't have to do that. Tell him. About us. It wasn't necessary."

Shannon paused with one hand on the door. He contemplated several responses before finally saying, "Meet me in the cafeteria after we both have a shower?"

"Yeah, sure." Brandon blinked at him. "Shannon?"

Shannon stopped in the doorway, and waited.

"You're a great guy."

"See you in a bit."

---------------

Kenshin's phone rang, waking him, just past noon. He sleepily flipped it open, didn't recognize the phone number, pressed it to his ear, and said, "This is Kenshin."

"It's Joe, Ken." Dawson's gravelly, elderly, voice made Kenshin come instantly, fully, awake. "Sasaki said you figured out what he was, so I thought I'd let you know how he was. Since Brandon told Danny what happened and Danny called me."

"How's Sasaki?" Kenshin didn't think an elaborate explanation was necessary. He'd tried calling the hospital earlier, but they had been unwilling to speak to him because he was not kin.

_Danny must know that Sasaki's a Watcher, however._That was an unsettling realization. Who else had known about Sasaki?

He sat up, glanced around the room, then rose and shut the bedroom door. Morgan was typing away on her laptop in the next room. Officer Green was nursing a coffee; it was well past the end of his shift and Kenshin hoped someone would replace him, soon.

Joe was saying, "On a ventilator. Sedated. They're not allowing visitors. I spoke to his daughter; they think he'll be okay."

"I believed he would be. He's got a fighting spirit, that he does." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "Mr. Dawson ..."

"... Call me Joe. C'mon, Ken. Mac's got you trained finally, so I _know _you can use first names if you want to," Joe cajoled.

"If I want to," Kenshin allowed.

"Oh, I'm hurt." Now the man was razzing him. "Anyway. I thought I'd call and pass some information on about Morgan. That is, if you're going to consider me enough of a friend to listen to."

Kenshin honestly had no idea at first what to say to that. After a moment's embarrassed and baffled silence, he finally came up with, "I am sorry for any offense you may have taken. Understand, please, Mr. Dawson, that my caution towards you is nothing personal. I do not dislike you, but you have ties to people I heartily mistrust. As does Sasaki."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Do you want to know about Morgan or not?"

"Yes. If you would be so kind." Kenshin found he was anticipating Joe's words.

"Okay. Here's what we know -- Dall, the Immortal that Carrie killed, for starters, was hired as a hit man to take out Morgan."

"I figured that much out from what he told me," Kenshin growled.

"Well, he was involved with the mafia. Your girl was doing housekeeping for an old man who is quite a kingpin of organized crime in the London area. She witnessed the man's son being shot to death, and the man's rival now wants her dead, because she can, apparently, implicate him."

"Why didn't he use a hit man like every other good Mafioso?" Kenshin grumbled.

"Probably because it was a crime of passion," Joe's voice was remarkably dry. "Your little girl was dating both men. And she was sexually involved with both of them, I'm sorry to say."

Kenshin contemplated that for a long, annoyed moment. It explained a lot about Morgan's behavior, but it also meant she was possibly no innocent bystander. "Do her parents know?"

"Adam got that information out of her father. About her being in a current relation with the murderer and a past one with the dead guy."

Kenshin's absolute silence must have frightened Joe, because he added, "Calm down, Kenshin!"

"I'm _calm_." Kenshin was, though he was possibly, irrationally, murderously, coldly angry. Joe had read that deadly quiet correctly. And he thought he'd forgiven Methos. He didn't like the implications of this -- the ancient Immortal was devious, sneaky, and truth impaired. And he'd made contact with Kenshin's family.

"You know that your kenki is practically zapping me in the ear through the phone?" Dawson, Kenshin was convinced, was smirking.

"You cannnot sense ki," Kenshin responded, with less confidence than he managed to project into his voice. Dawson was a veteran of the Vietnam war; moreover, MacLeod had said a few things that had led Kenshin to believe that Dawson had saved the Highlander's ass a few times.

"Calm down. All Adam did was get him drunk at a bar. Tammy asked him to help out a bit, since he was already there. You know, Tammy? Who you've been crushing over for as long as I've known her?"

"I am not _crushing _over Tammy," Kenshin said, stiffly, allowing himself to be baited into responding to this because it gave him a chance to think through Methos contacting the Trevors. "She is a friend. Nothing more."

Dawson snickered. "Oh, I know you're harmless. So does Methos. But you do like her ..."

"I'm going to ask Carrie to _marry _me." And the worst part was that he wasn't romantically interested in Tammy. She was gentle and polite and very ladylike; he had concluded long ago that he liked fiery, tomboyish women who challenged his assumptions. But, as he'd said, she was a friend. A good one.

"You've known Tammy longer. Though your friendship with my best friend's wife is rather beside the point. Adam just got him Morgan's father talking over some beers. Sebastian Trevor doesn't even know that Adam is connected to Kenny Myojin."

So which man was the father? Kenshin wondered. The murderer or the dead man? Did Morgan even know?

"Back to the topic of Morgan, Dawson-san. "

"Yeah. Anyway. Little Miss Trevor witnessed ex-boyfriend kill new boyfriend." Dawson hesitated. "What I can't figure out is why the _new _boyfriend's father's goons were the ones trying to kill her. And Dall worked for him too -- by the way, he knows about Immortals. That's not that unusual for the upper level of organized crime. So watch your head if you tangle with them. I don't know if they know _you _are Immortal, but it would not be hard for them to learn, given that they do have Immortal connections. And Dall may have told them."

"That doesn't sound right," Kenshin said, baffled. "About Dall and the other hit men, working for the father."

"Yeah, that's what I said." Dawson blew out a short, sharp breath. "I'm working on solving that puzzle for you. So's Methos. Likely she knows something that she shouldn't."

"I'll try to get it out of her on my end," Kenshin stared at the wall, with Morgan seated just on the other side. He didn't look forward to prying secrets out of her. It just wasn't in his nature to be nosy. But enough was enough; he needed to know what he was dealing with. "What were the men's names?"

"Jeffrey Garret was the man who died. Reynold Gordon was the shooter."

"Thanks, Joe-san," Kenshin said, absently.

"That's an improvement."

"What?"

"Joe-san. It's better than 'Mr. Dawson.'"

"Et-to ..."

"Have a good afternoon, Ken," Dawson said, cheerfully, and ended the call with a click.


	24. Chapter 24

Kenshin had his game face on.

Carrie recognized that his smile was for Morgan's benefit. He was cheerful and silly and jovial; however, his eyes were never still, darting about the concourse. His words and his laughter said that he was relaxed. But he was missing nothing, wary, alert, for that. Had they been alone she suspected his expression would have been much more serious.

Currently, he also didn't look much like Kenshin; he'd spent an hour in his bathroom that morning and had emerged thoroughly disguised. A little bit of hair dye and a lot of makeup had made quite a difference, Carrie thought.

Not for the first time, she wondered how old he'd been when he had first died. Without his scars, he looked so very much younger.

"Would you two like an ice cream cone?" Kenshin offered, gesturing with one hand at a stand selling frozen yogurts and ice cream. His hands were still the same -- deeply scarred, with heavy calluses. It amazed her that his touch could be so very gentle when his hands were so battered.

"Ice cream!" Morgan crowed. Apparently, her morning sickness wasn't bothering her at the moment. Her waistline, however, was expanding with almost visible speed -- in just the last few days she'd gone from chubby to swallowed-a-watermelon-whole.

"Sure," Carrie agreed. "I'll have a yogurt."

It was two hours until his flight left. Ostensibly, she was hanging out at the airport to keep him company and because she would, truly and deeply, miss him. Already, the pain of missing him was making it very hard for her to keep a smile on her face to match his.

However, she was also present because he'd checked his sword early and was comparatively defenseless. He wanted to make absolutely sure that the sakabatou made it to Heathrow with him; he'd shown up three hours early and checked his luggage on arrival so it would have as much time as possible to make the plane.

Since they were waiting in the airport lobby and she didn't have to go through the metal detectors, she had her sword hanging off her belt. It felt like a weird role reversal to be the one protecting Kenshin -- and Morgan -- but there you had it. Kenshin had asked her to stick around with sword in hand until just before the flight was to depart just in case anyone tried another hit on Morgan.

That Kenshin trusted her ability to hold her own in a fight felt amazing. He'd made the suggestion casually and matter of factly.

Morgan had walked ahead of them -- the airport had a display of artistic paintings of famous people and she was staring at them. Carrie said, very low, and in Japanese, "Be careful in England."

He nodded. "I promise. And you, as well. Take care, Carrie-dono."

She wanted to kiss him. They'd done that this morning, however -- there had been no time nor privacy for anything more, but he'd pulled her aside, into his room at the dorm when he came to pick his things up. And he'd kissed her thoroughly and then held her close for a long moment, before Sandy had come looking for him and had interrupted the moment. She ached to be back in his arms.

Standing close to him now, she could smell his aftershave and the scent brought the moment rushing back. She desperately wanted to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his hair, and beg him not to leave her. But she wouldn't. He had duties and oaths to keep. He would simply not be Kenshin if he didn't uphold his word. To ask him to betray his promise to Morgan -- and to his long-dead son -- would be purely selfish.

But oh, she wanted to. However, she simply licked her ice cream cone and put on a brave face for his benefit.

------------------

Kenshin relaxed a bit on the airplane after the doors sealed. He didn't like flying, but at least it was highly unlikely that anyone could manage a hit _on _an airplane.

Morgan jittered in the seat beside him. He'd given her the aisle seat under the assumption that she might need to run to the bathroom regularly. She stuck her legs out into the aisle, fiddled with the seatbelt, adjusted the air vent over her head, then pulled the inflight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of her and restlessly began to leaf through it.

Bored after a minute, she started to put it back. Kenshin intercepted the magazine before she could tuck it away. Wordlessly, he tore a page out -- it had an ad for lipstick on one side, and for a luxury car on the other. He creased it, then tore it, so he had a perfect square. Still without comment, he began to fold the paper into a figure.

Morgan watched, curious.

He made a frog that hopped when you pushed down on it, then released it.

"Cool!" she said, approvingly.

"I'm glad it meets your approval," Kenshin smiled. He proceeded to make her a fish that had a mouth that opened when you pressed on the gills, and then a giraffe, and an elephant with enormous, outsized ears. The last used up his paper.

She grabbed another magazine. "Can you show me how to make the frog?"

"Certainly." He was amused by her delight at the origami; sometimes, it was the simplest things that made people happy.

--------------

Three hours into the flight, Morgan had a whole zoo of origami animals tucked into her carryon bag. She'd proven to be a quick study and had learned to make her own. "I'm going to teach my daughter how to do this," she told him, cheerfully. "Someday. When she's old enough."

"You'll have a few years to practice and get very good at origami," Kenshin said. She'd exhausted his knowledge of paper animals pretty quickly. He considered origami a party trick to keep the children occupied -- it was something he'd learned from Atsuko, of all people -- so his knowledge was far from exhaustive.

As Kenshin had suspected, however, she needed to use the bathroom regularly. She grimaced at him. "Baby's dancing on my bladder again. Excuse me."

He nodded. She rose and headed off towards the back of the plane.

The woman sitting to his right, against the window, had been silent until now. She spoke up now, "Your girlfriend?"

Kenshin started to deny it. Carrie was his girlfriend, not Morgan. But they had a cover story, and he caught his automatic correction in time. He held a hand up, displaying a cheap silver ring. "Wife."

Internally, he winced as he told the lie. It felt entirely wrong.

"She's very young," the woman said, sounding a little disapproving.

"Eighteen," Kenshin said, another lie. He was embarrassed, now. "I'm twenty."

The woman snorted. Clearly, she was skeptical of his age. "Quick wedding, eh?"

"The child's not mine." He fixed her with an annoyed gaze. That, too, was in the cover story that his agent had concocted. He was now Jimmy Kenneth Yamada, married to Nicole Yamada. However, it was a reasonable assumption that the kid would look_nothing _like him when she was born. Therefore, the story was that Morgan's child wasn't his -- rather, that they were childhood friends and he had married her after her boyfriend had broken up with her. It was a perfectly respectable story and it matched "Jimmy's" back story of being raised in the UK. Kenshin refused to play the role of a man who would impregnate a teenager out of wedlock.

The woman, however, didn't ask anything more. Instead, she made a snorting noise and turned away to stare out at the night-dark Pacific ocean.

Kenshin assumed she was thinking the worst -- perhaps that his teenaged "bride" had cheated on him. He wanted to correct her. But they needed to keep a low profile so he kept his mouth shut. He'd give her the cover story if she asked, but she didn't. This relieved him -- personal details were best kept private, and this was doubly true when one's personal story was a lie.

_This is going to be a very long flight, _he thought.

The plane hit a patch of turbulence. Somebody screamed in reaction. Kenshin sighed.

Morgan returned to her seat just as the jet shuddered through another round of rough air. She went pale and grabbed the airsick bag from the seat in front of her.

_Very, very long_, Kenshin thought, as she urped into the bag. Sympathetically, he pulled her hair back as she retched miserably. His eyes watered at the stink, and he closed his eyes as he fought back vestigial memories triggered by the odor. Smells were closely tied to memory -- and too many people he'd loved had died of sicknesses that began or ended with vomiting over his lifetime.

The woman beside the window made a disgusted growl, then gagged and grabbed for her own bag.

Oh, yeah. It was going to be a _pleasant _flight.

-------------------

An hour later, Kenshin rose to visit the lavatory himself. The flight was crowded; he knew that Morgan was probably very safe in her seat, but he still was nervous about leaving her. Still, he was only human and this flight was going to be many hours.

The vibration of the plane under his feet was unsettling, too; ever since the crash with Atsuko, several years ago, he'd been nervous and on edge in airplanes -- moreso, than before. Logically, he knew that flying was safer than driving, but telling that to the deepest, most paranoid parts of his soul was impossible. For the same reasons that he couldn't pass dark allies without glancing down them, and that he liked his hotel rooms on the top floors even on holy ground, he was scared of flying.

When he finished his toilet, and rose, he glanced in the mirror -- and jumped just a little. A _stranger _looked back at him. Black hair hung loose, down just past his collar bones -- he'd cut several inches off the ends. A century of practice had rendered him reasonably good at concealing makeup; the man who looked back at him in the mirror also had no scars -- and didn't appear to be wearing cosmetics, either. Dark eyebrows framed a heart-shaped face.

_I look like a girl_, he thought, unhappily. He blinked dark eyes; he had concealed the unusual color of his irises behind dark brown contact lenses. _I look like a Japanese school girl, about thirteen years old. _

Well, he didn't -- not really. He looked like a boy, just a young, effeminate one. An older teenager, at best. His new, illicitly gained passport, claimed he was eighteen and he hoped that would be believable. Half the reason that he normally didn't conceal his facial scars was that they made him look older and a _lot_tougher. Right now, he thought he looked like an innocent child.

_I'm going to be target for every Immortal who sees me_, he thought, unhappily. A hundred and twenty or so years after his first encounter with another Immortal, the word was pretty much out to the Immortal community: leave the red-head with the scars alone. But a young Japanese boy who had no history that they knew of? One with the face of an angel? Oh, yeah, he was counting on dealing with Challenges.

On the other hand, he hoped his disguise was good enough to keep the bad guys from knowing of his arrival. Morgan was pretty ordinary in appearance; he'd convinced her to cut her hair short and to wear a spare pair of his brown contacts, but she wouldn't be the first nor the last young teenage mother in London. But Kenshin, with his long red hair and distinctive scars, _knew _he could be recognized.

He'd made a very strong impression on a pair of hit men. He expected that by now the two had sent word of his description back to their boss. And the police report regrettably had his name in it. So, in order to prevent being identified he had disguised himself.

He shook his head, causing his hair to swish across his shoulders. He _hated _it loose -- it fell forward into his face, tangled, and it was simply hot and sticky and miserable. Plus, after a hundred and sixty years of a pony tail, wearing his hair down just felt wrong. And to top it all off, framing his face with long hair made him look girly and he had enough issues with being short and small-boned without adding _girly _to the mix.

_Ah, the things I do for the children_. With that self-mocking thought, he headed back to the seat.

----------------

Much to his relief, he was able to pick his sword his sword and their luggage up without incident in Heathrow. The only issue he experienced was a few questions about the sakabatou from a curious customs official; Kenshin had the proper paperwork to import it as a collector's item -- and a back story that he was a courier for Duncan Macleod -- who was a licensed antique dealer of very good reputation -- and that he was taking the sword to a buyer for MacLeod. When he left the story would change to, "the buyer backed out."

Sometimes, he hated his life: the lies, the subterfuge, the falsehoods. He had long ago accepted them as a necessary evil, but the need to mislead officials rankled to the very core of his soul.

Morgan herself was quiet and subdued, matching his own mood. She stood silently beside him when he hailed a cab.

The familiar cadence of British English swirled around him. Kenshin could -- and did -- do a passable North American accent, courtesy of Marshall's quickening. Marshall had lived in Canada and America for almost a century and had sounded slightly Midwestern and a little bit Canadian, with a hint of New York in the mix.

However, Kenshin had originally learned English in London, a century before. It was almost with a sense of relief that he let the clipped consonants and broad vowels of what he thought of as "his" English back into his speech. Morgan gave him a startled look when, with a perfectly good upper-class English accent, he gave directions to their hotel.

"Where did ..." she stopped, fell silent, and stared at him suspiciously.

"I learned English from an Englishwoman," Kenshin said, which was perfectly true. He just wasn't telling her that the Englishwoman in question was Lady Jessica Trevor, Morgan's distant ancestor.

Morgan frowned at him. "Someday you're going to tell me your whole story, right?"

"Later," he shot her a glare. The cabby could hear them, and this was not consistent with their story of being childhood friends.

She persisted, "You said you were in a war ...?"

"_Later_," he growled at her, casting a quick glance at the driver.

"Oh." She subsided.

-------------

"Have you given any thought to how you will tell your parents about your child?" Kenshin asked Morgan, after they were in the privacy of a suite of hotel rooms.

She shot him an inscrutable look. "I've been trying not to think about it."

Kenshin nodded. He suggested, "Sometimes, it is best to simply tell the truth in plain words. And then you no longer will need to avoid the subject in her thoughts."

"Simple enough for _you _to say," she sat heavily down on the bed and rested a hand on her stomach.

"Also, while we are here -- did you want to speak to the father of your child?" He offered, carefully, unsure how she would react. "He should know, as well. It is his daughter too."

She froze in place, and then averted her eyes. "No."

"You will need to tell him sooner or later."

"He knew." Her words were short, bitten out with anger and grief behind them.

He caught the past tense, and winced. "Is he dead, Morgan-dono?"

"Yeah." She rose and disappeared into the bathroom, pushing the door firmly shut after her.

Kenshin sighed as he came to a quick and unpleasant conclusion. Pieces were starting to fall into place here. He waited patiently for her to return -- when she did, after ten minutes, she said, shortly, while rummaging through her suitcase, "I don't want to talk about this."

"I know that you would prefer to keep this a private matter," Kenshin crouched beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. "But I need to know who all the players in this vicious game are to keep you safe, Morgan. Sasaki very nearly died protecting you and he is still too gravely ill to tell me the details that _he _knows. I need you to tell me what you know."

She hunched her shoulders. "I don't want to talk about it."

In this day and age, deaths were unusual. He had made a logical assumption. "The dead man -- the one whose death you witnessed. Is he the father of your child, then?"

"Yeah."

"I'm very sorry." He knew too well the pain of seeing a lover die before one's eyes.

"I loved him." The words seemed torn from her chest. She stood up, fists balled, eyes suddenly blazing. "I_loved _him. I don't care what anyone says! He was _mine_! I _loved _him! I loved him more than anything! I'd have done_anything _for him!"

"I can tell that you loved him," Kenshin said, soothingly.

"My daughter is _his_." She crossed her arms over her stomach. "She's all I've got of him now. I'm_keeping _her, Kenshin. She's _his_. Nobody's ever going to take her from me. She's mine!"

A few days ago, she had been talking about giving the child up for adoption. Kenshin wasn't surprised by her change in feelings towards the child. Seeing a picture of the baby, and feeling her move, was doubtless making it more real. He was concerned that Morgan wasn't emotionally ready to be a mother -- but then again, she had to grow up sometime. He had no doubt that she had the ability to rise to the occasion, if she decided to do so.

"Morgan," Kenshin said, very seriously, "I will do everything in my power to see that you can keep your child if you want to. You are her mother, after all. If you chose adoption, I will support you in that, as well."

She blinked at him.

He sat down on the foot of the bed in her half of the suite and patted the covers next to him. Uncertainly, she sat. "Morgan," he said quietly, "the hit men who tried to kill you worked for the father of your boyfriend. Do you know why they are trying to kill you? I would think that they would want you alive to testify."

Wide-eyed, she shook her head. "I don't know. Well, Jeffrey's father hated me. M-maybe he blames me."

Kenshin suspected it was more than that. "Does he know you're carrying his granddaughter?"

"No. The only person I told was Jeffrey."

"Could Jeffrey have told him?"

"Jeffrey wanted it kept a _secret_." He was not imagining the bitterness in her words. "He said they'd lock him up if they found out."

"Ah. He was older than you?"

"Twenty-five," she whispered.

Kenshin fought back an angry growl. The man was dead, so there was no sense in getting pissed at him. It wasn't like he could castrate, disembowel, and flay alive a dead man.

"He said he loved me," she hunched her shoulders, and wrapped her arms around her stomach. "He said he_loved _me. I told him ... I told him I miscarried the first one, when my mom made me ... she forbid me to ever see him again, too. He said he _loved _me."

Kenshin put his arm around her shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Morgan."

"He said ... he said when I turned eighteen, we'd get married." She hiccupped. "He said we'd get_married_. And then I got pregnant again an' I wanted to keep it. An' I asked him to help me. I told him what my mother did the first time. He had money. A trust fund that he'd just gotten access to, when he turned twenty-five. We could have left the country together. I wouldn't have told anyone it was _his_. I didn't want him to get into any trouble."

She rocked back and forth. "He said he loved me. But if he loved me, why didn't he love our baby? Kenshin, why?"

She burst into messy tears and choking sobs.

"Because he didn't really love you," Kenshin said, softly, "If you love someone, you will make sacrifices for them. It sounds as if he was not simply using you. Morgan, I'm so sorry."

"He wasn't using me! He said he'd marry me. He said he'd marry me." She clung to him. "I thought he was going to be _mine_. My husband! And he died! We loved each other! But he didn't want me to have this baby. He wanted me to have babies later!"

"Shh." He hurt for her. He might think she was a childish, immature young woman -- but that did not mean she was not grieving terribly. Much of the reasons behind her pain was becoming clear to him now.

He knew what love was, and he well knew the depth and power of young love. He was not a man who would discount the strength of her emotions simply because she was a teen. At fifteen, he had loved Tomoe with all his heart, had married her, had expected to have a life together with her. He had dared for the very first time, at fifteen, to dream of a future which was not short, bloody, and brutal. Tomoe had been his _everything_.

"I thought we would be together forever." She sniffled. "I ... we were poor, you know? Great-grandfather Trevor never shared any of his money with us. I cleaned rooms at Jeffrey's father's house to make spending money. I wanted nice clothes and stuff and my grandmother got me a job there to make pocket money when I was twelve. She was his housekeeper."

_Twelve. Gods. _Kenshin tightened his grip on her. Twelve was a _child_.

"He was so handsome ... tall, dark hair, big brown eyes." She rocked back and forth in his arms. "I loved him from the moment I saw him. He played soccer and I went to all his matches. I made him cookies and stuff. Cleaned his room extra specially. And they made _fun _of me. His father did, and my granny. They thought it was just a silly crush."

"And what did he do?" Kenshin said, knowing the answer but needing to hear it from her.

She smiled through her tears. "He was always nice to me. He never made fun of me like everyone else did. He gave me earrings for my thirteenth birthday. He shared lunch with me sometimes. He loaned me DVDs and stuff."

She giggled through her tears. "You know, I kissed him first. He'd had a really bad day -- he was dating this woman who was completely wrong for him. She broke up with him when she figured out he was ... different. He was special, but not very ... well, not normal. Bitch. She broke his heart! He was sitting in his room listening to music and getting drunk ... he looked so pitiful. I hugged him and then I kissed him."

Kenshin fought back a sigh.

"He ... he said I was the only person who liked him." She sniffled. "And it was true! His father's an asshole. The women he dated were just attracted to his money and his power. They didn't even see _him, _most of them, or they expected him to be something he wasn't and couldn't ever be. His mother was dead. She died twenty years ago. He had nobody but me."

She pulled free of his arms. Kenshin let her go, expecting she'd go shut herself in the bathroom again. But instead, she just walked to the window. "We loved each other. I know he was a lot older than me, but I _loved _him, Kenny. He was _mine_. After ... after he made love to me, he stopped dating other women except when he had to have a date for appearances -- at society functions and stuff. He said we had to keep it secret that we were lovers, so we did, but we still hung out -- we did stuff together. And our parents _hated _it. Both mine and his father."

"I can imagine," Kenshin said. He could easily place himself in the shoes of both fathers -- one protecting his daughter, one concerned about his son's interest in a much younger girl.

"When I got pregnant ... the first time ... my mom forbid me to ever speak to him again. She said I'd shamed the family. She made me have an abortion. I was fourteen!"

Kenshin would have involved the police, personally, but he kept his mouth closed. Morgan was talking, and he would not interrupt her by implying he disapproved. That would be a discussion for another day.

She was clearly biting back angry tears. "I wanted that baby, Kenny!"

"I know you did," he felt a flash of anger towards her parents. He could see their point of view, and yet, he knew she would grieve for the baby for the rest of her life. "I will do everything in my power to see that you can keep this one if you do want to."

"My mother's going to be furious." She hunched her shoulders. "I wasn't supposed to be seeing Jeffrey. I told her I had a job babysitting, after school. Which was kinda true, it was just Jeffrey's kid sister I was babysitting. He told his father he was dating this woman -- her name was Melody. Real tramp. He went out with her a few times to make it look good for his father and she was _all over _him... Anyway. We were meeting after I got out of school. He'd send his driver to pick me up, and we'd go to this flat his father had, and, well, you know. Mostly we just hung out. We played a lot of video games and watched cartoons with his sis. Normal stuff. But sometimes we'd ditch her ... and then I got pregnant again. And we were so damned careful!"

"And he wanted you to get rid of the baby?"

"Because people would find out and keep us apart. And he could go to jail. Yeah. He said I could have children later, after he married me. When I was older. He said we'd have lots of children." She wiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "It's not fair -- just because I was only fifteen -- Kenshin, I know it's selfish to want to keep her, but ... and now he's dead and I don't know how I'm going to support her!"

"Selfish?" he said, startled. He said, aghast, "You're her _mother_."

She hiccupped. "I didn't speak to him for weeks when he said I needed to get rid of the baby!"

"Wanting to keep your daughter isn't selfish."

"But if I had her, people would find out about us. And they'd send Jeffrey to jail. I didn't want him to go to jail. He didn't do anything wrong, he didn't do anything I didn't want! I was always the one talking him into things, y'know. It's not fair he'd be the one punished!"

"Kiddo," Kenshin said, "He was older than you. You may have loved him, but he should have _waited_."

"Oh, you don't understand what it was like! You think because I'm just a teenager ..."

"I was fifteen."

She stopped short, stared at him.

He lifted an eyebrow at her. "I met a woman who changed my life when I was fifteen. I married her."

"You're _married_?" She stared at him. "Carrie?"

"Tomoe died, Morgan." Kenshin, still seated on the edge of the bed, tucked one knee to his chest and regarded her over the top of it. "Do not accuse me of believing that teens cannot love truly and deeply, because I have been there. For the very first time in my life, I was dreaming of a future that wasn't bloodshed and death -- and she was at the center of it. She was everything to me. And then she died."

"Oh."

He blew out a sharp breath. "I was a killer, Morgan. I was very good at it, and she wanted me to stop. It was destroying me, and she knew it. It was an accident, but -- my blade was the one that killed her. So I know what pain is, too. That moment, when I saw her face, and felt her blood hot on my hands, when I smelled ... I didn't mean for it to happen. I would have given my life to see her live."

"Oh." She stared at him. Then, suddenly, she turned away again. "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"Neither do I," he said, with real feeling. He had mentioned Tomoe to Morgan only because he knew she needed to know about _his_ past. However, he did not want nor need the sympathy of a teenage girl. "But the issue remains -- how are you going to tell your parents about the child?"

"My parents will disown me if I tell them ..."

He sighed. "I hope it does not come to that, Morgan. I truly do."

"You've never met my mom!"

"Morgan? Would you prefer to talk to your parents over the phone, or in person?"

She folded her arms. "I don't want to talk to them at all."

"That is not an option. Would you like _me _to tell them?"

He expected her to refuse that option out of hand. Instead, she suddenly seemed to sag with relief. "Would you?"

"Aa. If you wish."

"Thank you." She sounded truly grateful. In truth, he decided it wasn't that bad of an idea. He could talk to her parents, get a good idea of what they were like, and intervene if they seemed likely to be irrational.

She blinked at him through tear-damp lashes. "I thought you were a jerk at first, you know. But you're not so bad."

He grinned at her. "You are a good kid with a great deal of potential, Morgan. I will not let you waste your potential. If that makes me a 'jerk' then so be it."

"I wish other people thought I had potential," she said, bitterly. She sat down on the edge of the bed next to him. "Jeffrey did. He was even going to pay for my college. He was always pushing me to get good grades and stuff. He had a really hard time in school; he was always impressed when I got A's. And now he's dead."

He put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm so sorry about Jeffrey, kiddo."

"Yeah. I miss him so much. Nobody believes me, but we really loved each other. It wasn't perverted like people try to make it seem. You'd have to know Jeffrey to understand, and he's dead now, so you can't, not ever!"

He started to say other things to her ... but then the buzz of another Immortal washed across his senses. Kenshin swore, rose, picked his sword and sheath up off the floor, and headed for the door. When Morgan moved to follow him he held a hand up to her. "Morgan, stay there. Someone's coming and they may not be friendly."

"How do ..."

"Stay," he said, pointing at the bed. He flashed her a quick grin. "This is me being a jerk. Sit there and don't move."


	25. Chapter 25

Kenshin opened the hotel room door, stepped out, and menaced the approaching Immortal with his sword, all in one smooth move.

Richie Ryan jerked his head back reflexively and flung his hand up so that his forearm would take a blow that never came. He stood frozen in place, then slowly, one eyebrow lifted high as recognition dawned. "Hi, Ken. Like the new look. What are you supposed to be, twelve?"

Kenshin growled in annoyance, "What are you doing here?"

"Standing in the doorway of your hotel room while you point a sword at my throat?" Richie glared at Kenshin right back. He was not afraid of Kenshin. "And you're good enough at reading people's buzzes that you knew it was me."

Kenshin put the sakabatou away with a swift click of steel into the scabbard. Actually, he had not realized it was Richie, but he didn't see the point to defining his limitations. He could make an educated guess on who a buzz belonged to if he knew who was in the area; he had categorically not expected to find Richie on the other side of the door. "What are you doing in London?"

"Following you?"

Kenshin thought, but did not say, several rude words. He let the hotel room door click shut behind him so that Morgan would not hear this exchange. Richie observed, "If there had been anyone else in this hall and had they seen you pull your blade they might have called the authorities, Ken."

Kenshin snorted. "You were alone."

"Right. You're psychic like that. Look, I'm here to help."

"This one _told _you that he didn't want you involved anymore, " Kenshin sighed, through gritted teeth. He was truly and deeply pissed that Richie had followed him; he did not want Richie -- or any of his friends -- involved in this mess any more than they already were. It had gotten too dangerous.

"Uh-uh. Doesn't work that way, Ken. I've been involved since you dumped the girl on my doorstep. You can't just uninvolve me now. Mac says I'm an idiot, but there you have it: I've got a terrible hero complex." Richie raked an obviously aggravated hand through his red curls. "You can either accept my help or expect me to tag along behind but either way, I'm already part of things."

"How did you _find _this one?" Kenshin demanded.

"Helps to have a Watcher as a best buddy. And lose the pronoun glitch; you're annoying me."

Kenshin frowned at him. Pronoun glitch? He stated, finally, avoiding the subject of his speech patterns, "If Joe could find me this quickly, I'm going to assume that the bad guys can too."

"Well, that, and I bugged your wallet."

Kenshin opened his mouth, then decided that there was absolutely nothing he could say in response to that.

Richie grinned.

"Very well," Kenshin said, opening the hotel room door back up. "Morgan, we have company."

"Richie!" Morgan said, in surprise.

Kenshin ignored their reunion -- Richie was hugging her -- and went immediately to his wallet. He inspected it carefully and found that one of his grocery-store membership cards felt a bit thicker than normal. He snapped in half, revealing that two cards had been glued together and there was a GPS chip sandwiched in the middle.

Richie grinned unapologetically.

Kenshin had a very vague memory of picking up groceries with Richie three days before. Richie had claimed to have forgotten his membership card. Kenshin had absently handed the younger Immortal his own card -- and Richie had obviously swapped them out.

"Very good," he said, with grudging respect. He'd caught not the slightest hint of deception in that interchange. Richie was apparently quite talented at masking his ki -- he would need to talk to him later to find out if that was unconscious or deliberate.

Richie grinned. "I'm always good."

--

Morgan was in the shower, a half hour later -- she'd shouted a happy greeting when she'd seen him, hugged Richie, and then fled to the bathroom to make herself look more presentable. Kenshin had diagnosed _teenage crush_ and was a bit relieved that Richie was the target of the crush, and not himself. And he was glad for the chance to talk to Richie.

The younger man sipped a cup of coffee. "Jeffrey, huh?"

"Yes. I'm intending to speak to his father shortly." Kenshin said that with a tight smile. Richie's presence would make this easier, logistically speaking. He trusted Richie to defend Morgan.

"Want company?" Richie said, with keen anticipation.

"Not on this, Richie-kun."

"Oh, now it's _kun_." He'd apparently picked up the basics of honorifics somewhere. Kenshin wasn't surprised -- MacLeod was his mentor and Mac spoke fluent Japanese. Plus, there was always the chance that Richie had taken the head of someone Japanese. Kenshin wasn't going to ask; he didn't want to know.

Instead, Kenshin gave him a very innocent look. "Would you prefer Richie-san?"

"Just call me Richie." Richie lifted a shoulder in half a shrug. "Mac's got you trained; now it's my turn. Anyway -- are you going to go bust heads? Because I can watch your back."

"If you're must insist on being involved, I'd like you to stay with Morgan. She's most likely safe in this hotel room, however, I don't want her unsupervised." Kenshin nodded towards the bathroom. "Keep an eye on her; I don't trust her, and this is her home city. If she decides to strike out on her own, she likely has friends here and it may be much harder to find her this time."

"Mmm."

"There was also a great deal of deception in her soul when she was telling me about Jeffrey. I do not doubt that she thought she was in love with him, but there is more to this story. I seek to get to the bottom of it." Kenshin hesitated before adding, "Joe told me she was also dating the killer, but she did not even mention this. I suspect she thinks she is playing me successfully for sympathy."

"Ouch." Richie ran a hand over his face and then stared out the window. "She's probably scared to death."

"Aa. She may think I would not help her if I knew the whole truth. She also sounded very possessive of Jeffrey, to an unhealthy degree." Kenshin leaned on the window sill and brushed his loose hair back from his face with an impatient swipe of his fingers. It stayed tucked behind his ears for precisely two seconds. "The truth is, I'd help her regardless -- but it will take her a bit to figure that out, I think. Ultimately, I hope she'll confess the whole truth to me. It may do her some good to realize that I'll help her even after she deceived and lied to me."

"Either she'll learn to trust or she'll learn she can take advantage of you," Richie pointed out.

"That wouldn't be the first time that has happened ..." Kenshin said, wryly. He knew damn well he was far too forgiving of his young charges, sometimes. "But I am not certain Joe has the whole story either."

"Joe's information is generally good."

"Yes, but he's only as accurate as his sources. Something does not feel right here." Kenshin shook his head. "I'm going to go have a talk with a few people, that I am. If you will stay here with Morgan."

Richie nodded. "Of course."

"And be careful." Kenshin stressed his words slowly. "The bad guys may know what you are. If that's the case, you could be in much more danger in a fight."

"I can take care of myself. It'll be fine, Ken."

__

I've heard those sentiments before, my friend, Kenshin thought, but did not say. He glanced up at Richie, and then simply nodded. "And thank you for caring enough to come. Even if I didn't want you here, and you had to 'bug' my wallet to do it."

Richie grinned. "Not a problem, buddy."

--

Jeffrey's last name was Garret, and his father had a rather large estate outside of town. It was actually not far from the Trevor family home. After pulling up a map online, Kenshin estimated that the distance to Kenji's ancestral home was perhaps two or three miles. Destination determined, Kenshin took a bus to the general area. Along the way he found himself recognizing things, somewhat wistfully -- a tree that had been old a century ago was now diseased and dying. A foot bridge, bypassed by the modern road, moldered into ruin; he'd taught Yukio to fish from that bridge.

They passed a park where he'd once found Atsuko stoned half out of her mind on pot and hanging out with a bad crowd at twenty -- she'd grown up and grown out of marijuana, thankfully. She'd never done hard drugs, unlike her niece; Akane had partied hard and often and with great glee, but she had never been self-destructive.

__

Thank the Gods, Kenshin thought fervently, _that Carrie is a grown-up at twenty. _Atsuko might have been an 'adult' legally but he didn't think she'd reached 'grown up' until her thirties, at least.

There was a filling station standing in the spot where he had bade Chiyoko farewell, so long ago. He stared, as they drove past; he only knew that was the location because it was at a crossroads.

A tiny grocery store was located where Darius's little church had once stood. It had been there seventy years; he'd once escorted George to see the shop's owner, as a young boy, and made him confess the theft of a peach. As punishment, George had been required to paint the front of the store for the owner. Harsh punishment for a child, perhaps -- it had taken him a couple of days -- but George had never again shoplifted. Kenshin and Kenji had taken turns supervising him to make sure the job was done right.

George had later worked for the owner, for several summers, until he'd gone to war in the 1940's. He'd managed the store for a few years upon his return -- though Kenshin had not been there to see that, having returned to Japan during the war.

The hall he'd bought with Kaoru to run a dojo in was long gone. Ironically, Darius's congregation had moved to that plot of land and a newer building stood there. He knew because he'd sold them the land, nearly ninety years ago. They had made it holy ground, and that had felt just right.

Historically, there had been a lot of open country between what had been a rural hamlet and the Trevor estate. However, the countryside had since been carved up and turned into miles and miles of small gentleman farms. The Garret estate was one of these lots -- a couple of acres of gardens, high walls, and a large, two-story gothic mansion.

Kenshin neatly jumped up to the top of the wall and surveyed the lot.

There were motion detectors and infrared cameras situated in the garden. He avoided both with agile acrobatics, and kept to the trees and the rooftops of outbuildings. The windows on the first floor had burglar alarms, but as was typical of modern homes, the second floor was not protected. He easily jumped from the roof of a poolside cabana, caught the railing around a balcony, and swung himself up.

The balcony door led into a library. The balcony door was locked but not alarmed and he made quick work of this obstacle after removing lockpicks from the sole of his boots. Silently, stealthily, he padded through the library and into a hall.

This man had wealth, and taste to go with it, Kenshin decided -- if one considered 'gothic' to be good taste. Some people would. Kenshin founded it dark and gloomy.

He had enormous quantities of books in the library -- old, leatherbound, classical. There was expensive art on the walls; Kenshin paused to very briefly note a Japanese woodcut from the 1700's. Had he not been focused on the task at hand, he might have spent more time admiring it.

The decor tended towards dark wood paneling and polished wood floors. It was late and people were asleep; he sensed nobody awake in the building.

The first bedroom he peered into belonged to a woman, judging by the clothing thrown over a chair. The second had the soulless feel of a guest bedroom, as did the third. The fourth was a little girl's room; the little girl was curled under the covers in a very small ball; Kenshin thought she looked scared even in her sleep and wondered how badly the killing of her brother had affected her.

The fifth room, close to the end of the hall, was a boy's room.

Kenshin stepped through the doorway and let the latch click near-soundlessly shut behind him. There was a desk light on in the room despite the fact that the young man had been dead several weeks.

__

Jeffrey's room, Kenshin thought. A half-finished letter on personalized stationary on the desk confirmed this; it was dated six months before. The room had apparently been cleaned -- Joe had said Jeffrey was shot in his room -- but left otherwise untouched. Or, perhaps, put back into the same condition it had been before the boy had died. Grieving parents sometimes kept things exactly as they were -- Kenshin merely kept a memento box, but he understood the impulse.

The letter was absolutely rampant with bad grammar and poor spelling. It appeared to be written to the boy's grandmother and contained nothing of any real importance that Kenshin could see -- it was a thank you letter for birthday gifts.

Kenshin continued his inspection of the room. Jeffrey had liked airplanes and soccer; there were posters on the walls and models and sports-star bobbleheads on the shelves. Too, there were stuffed animals on the bed -- he'd liked dragons and anime characters. There was even a plushy Pikachu, well worn and battered, sitting on the desk in an apparent place of honor. A childhood toy, Kenshin thought. However, he suspected most twenty-something men would have long ago abandoned their Pokemon toys. It said something about the man, but he wasn't yet sure what.

The closet had an array of t-shirts from various TV shows and movies -- science fiction, fantasy, cartoons. He liked Batman and Spiderman and various anime characters. There was also an assortment of athletic clothing -- mostly for soccer, but some running shoes, too, and riding boots, jodhpurs and a helmet. Kenshin concluded Jeffrey had been an athletic because much of the gear showed signs of wear and real use.

The only books appeared to be role-playing game books and manuals for video games. Given the level of literacy displayed in the letter, Kenshin suspected the boy had not been much of a reader. The bookshelves in the room, however, were stuffed with every video game imaginable, plus gadgets and toys better suited to a much younger person.

A console facing the foot of the bed had a big-screen TV. Cabinets underneath it held at least a dozen different video game systems including one that Kenshin was reasonably sure wasn't on the market yet.

Kenshin finally found a photograph tucked into an unimaginative place in the boy's sock drawer -- not well hidden, really. It was of a slightly younger Morgan, brown hair bleached platinum blond and striped through with purple, arm in arm with a boy that Kenshin assumed to be Jeffrey.

The boy was awkwardly tall and thin. Kenshin could see why Morgan had found him handsome -- dark hair, jaw length, framed a face that should have been ruggedly attractive. Kenshin was struck by something in the cast of the boy's features, however. He couldn't quite put a finger on what it was, but there was something _odd _about the young man. Even so, he was good looking.

In the same drawer, he found a neat little case with a high school diploma and a graduation photo -- Jeffrey's grin had stretched from ear to ear, beneath a tassled cap. His grade point average, however, was very low -- C's, mostly, and D's. He had gotten an 'A' in all art related classes, however. Kenshin did a bit of math -- the boy had been twenty when he graduated, according to the date on the paper. He'd probably been held back a few years.

At that instant, Kenshin sensed someone wake in the house. A warrior's _ki _brushed against his.

He slid a hand into his pocket, pulled his cell phone out, and thumbed on the 'record' function. Then, he waited.

Five minutes later, the door opened. An older man, balding, well-groomed, dressed in silk pajamas, and carrying a gun, stepped through the door.

Kenshin lifted an eyebrow. "Mr. Garret?"

"Himura Kenshin."

Kenshin inclined his head in acknowledgement. "So Dall told you what I am."

"Yes." The man growled. "Also, that you are a man of honor. I do not believe you are here to kill me in my own home."

"No. I simply like to know who my enemies are." Kenshin regarded the man calmly. The man had a gun, but Kenshin had little fear of firearms wielded at this close of a range. He rested a hand on his sakabatou's hilt -- by the time that Garret made the decision to pull the trigger and then did so, Kenshin could swat the weapon out of his hands. He would sense the change in the man's _ki _and that would give him more than ample warning.

"By trespassing in the room of my late son?" The man's eyebrows rose.

"You can tell a lot about a man by his children."

"Dall said if he failed to kill you, you would come to see me."

"So you are trying to kill Morgan. Why?" Kenshin asked, bluntly. He didn't see any point in introductions. Obviously, Dall had told Garret who he was. He now regretted cutting and dying his hair.

"She killed my son."

Kenshin's eyebrows rose up to vanish beneath his bangs.

"Or, as good as," he growled, as he radiated sudden, angry _hate_. "Jeffrey was special -- he was far more of a child than she was. She _ruined _him."

"Children grow up."

"Not Jeffrey." Garret shook his head viciously. The gun in his hand remained level, menacing. The rage and hate and anger rolling off the man's soul was palpable as a living thing; Kenshin could nearly taste it. "You don't understand, Himura. Jeffrey was my Peter Pan. He wasn't ever going to grow up. I told that girl to leave him alone. I told her he wasn't _capable _of being her boyfriend. I told Jeffrey to stay away from her. Her parents told her to leave him alone."

"She loved him," Kenshin said quietly. "Even if he was simple, she loved him."

"Simple." Garret spat the word out. "Politically incorrect, Kenshin."

Kenshin had meant no offense, and he winced at the man's sudden flare of anger. He wasn't afraid of Garret, but he didn't want to escalate this further with a poor choice of words. "I've lived over a hundred and sixty years. Political correctness is a form of slang; sometimes, I am unable to keep up with the slang. I apologize."

Garret's face twisted into a furious mask. "She took advantage of him! She seduced him, twisted him, introduced him to things he never should have learned about ... she deserves to _die _for what she did to him. It was nothing more than rape!" The man was so coldly angry that Kenshin had no difficulty conceiving of him wanting Morgan dead at all costs.

Kenshin sighed. He had to try to stop this problem at the source. "Are you aware that Morgan is pregnant with your granddaughter?"

Garret grew very still. Then his face twisted into a cloud of anger. "Get out of my house!"

"I am very sorry for your loss," Kenshin said, quietly, "but I cannot allow you to harm Morgan, or her daughter."

"Get out!"

Kenshin left -- the amount of rage and hate and frank grief in the man's soul made Kenshin afraid that he might actually try to fire the gun. He didn't see the point in a physical altercation; it would change nothing. And, short of killing the man, there was going to be no reprieve for Morgan from this angle.

Briefly, he was tempted go to the police with his recording. It would mean admitting to breaking and entering but that was a crime likely punishable only by a fine and deportation. However, he'd learned long ago that men as wealthy and powerful as Garret generally had connections. There was no guarantee of any sort of fair justice from the police even if he offered to testify.

Unfortunately, Garret had also called him by his real name on the tape. That could be problematic; he would need to explain that to the police. And if any of the police were history buffs ... coupled with Garret's apparent knowledge of his nature ... well.

The recording might be useful, or it might not. But it wasn't something he could take to the authorities just yet.

__

--

"I did some digging, like you asked," Joe said, several hours later, to Kenshin. The translatlantic phone call was clear as a bell -- Kenshin still expected long distance conversations to be full of static. "I couldn't get any of Jeffrey's medical records, but one of my contacts was able to pull up his school records."

Kenshin sat on the hotel room balcony, watching the sun rise. It was late, Pacific time; very early, his. He was wide awake, having not yet adjusted to the jet lag. "What did you find?"

"He had a recorded IQ of about 70. That's not terrible, but it is technically retarded."

Joe, at nearly eighty years of age, wasn't up on the politically correct terms either, Kenshin noted. What was it they said today? _Developmentally delayed_, he thought, though even that might be outdated ... it was hard to keep track. In his time, when he had first been learning English, the term would simply have been _moron_. Now _moron _was an insult, almost completely disassociated with a medical diagnoses.

"Did you find a reason for it?"

"No." Joe said. "It's not in his school records. He was mainstreamed with the regular students -- it was a private academy -- but received considerable tutoring on the side. They noted his social skills were several years behind his peers as well, though he was basically a good natured kid."

Kenshin sighed. He hoped it wasn't hereditary.

"I can keep digging, but medical information is kept pretty tightly locked up these days ..."

"It's not all that important. I know what I need to know, I think." Kenshin would make sure the baby got early screening and intervention if necessary, if Morgan and her parents failed to take care of that.

"Mmm."

"Joe, can I ask you if you know how Carrie is doing?"

"She and Danny were at the dojo yesterday. He's after Mac to teach him swordplay and Mac suggested he study with Carrie -- Mac and Danny don't always get along."

Kenshin smiled. Some things never changed. "What did she say?"

"That he needed to start with a thousand repetition of a couple of katas."

"And what did Danny do?"

"Tried to appeal to Mac. Mac pointed out he'd told him the same thing two years ago." Joe laughed. Kenshin could picture the man's wrinkled features, grinning broadly, thick grey bangs hanging in his eyes. Dawson continued, "Danny's a good kid, but he lacks patience. Mac won't teach him martial arts until he's willing to learn the basics first. Carrie just reinforced that."

Kenshin wished he'd been there to see that exchange. He was suddenly, fiercely, _homesick_. Joe's next words didn't help.

"She said she was going out Saturday evening with Brandon, Shannon, Danny and Sandy to the movies. She invited Mac, but he had other plans. Tammy and Adam might be joining them -- Adam's trying to get me to go, but I don't think they want to hang out with an ancient cripple."

Kenshin smiled. "Joe? Methos predates civilization. If he's cool enough to hang out with some twenty year old kids, you certainly are. And for that matter, _I _am older than you are."

"Kind of you to say that," Joe said.

He wished he could be there -- he wanted to simply be part of the gang. To hear Carrie laughing and bantering with Danny; to see Sandy and Brandon sniping at each other, to see Shannon's hesitant yet growing interest in Brandon. He wished he could watch. He wished he could be a part of their lives.

__

As soon as I can wrap this up with Morgan, I'll ...

His phone buzzed. Caller ID revealed that incoming call was from George. Kenshin said hastily, "Joe, I have to go. I've got a call I need to take from my grandson. _Thank _you for your help."

"Not a problem."

George's voice, thinned with distress to a painful wail, made Kenshin spring to his feet. "Grandpa! Thank God, thank God, Grandpa ..."

"George, slow down. What's wrong?"

"He's going to sell the estate!" George's rage and anger and grief was palpable. "He's selling my _home_! He's selling Grandpa Kenji's home!"

"Who is?" Kenshin said, startled.

"Toby!" George wailed. "Bastard is no grandson of mine, to do this to me! That estate's been in the family for over a century and I want it to stay in the family!"

Kenshin said, calmly, "George, slow down. He can't sell your home; I have legal power of attorney over your affairs, remember? If he tries to say you're not competent to handle your finances then _I _am in charge of your affairs. And this one is not going to allow _anyone _to sell the Trevor family estate."

"Hey!" A voice said in the background, "You're not supposed to have a cell phone!"

"It's mine!" George said, sounding angry and defiant.

"Your grandson said you weren't supposed to have one. Give it here, now ..."

"Fuck you! It's mine!"

"Be reasonable, George ... you know you have to play by the rules ..." the man said placatingly. Kenshin gritted his teeth, helpless to intervene.

"Fuck that!" George sounded furious, as he addressed the staff member.

"George!" Kenshin said, earnestly, "I'll come down right _now _and sort this out."

Kenshin winced as the line cut off. He'd never in his life heard George hit quite that note of panicked anger. He pocketed his own phone, stepped back into the hotel room, and woke Richie by softly calling his name.

"Yeh?"

"I've got trouble with my grandson. Will you keep an eye on Morgan?"

"Yeh."

"Thanks for coming."

"... Mmmhmm."

Richie rolled over and went back to sleep. Kenshin had no doubt that if there was real trouble the younger Immortal would be awake instantly. He snagged his coat off the back of a chair and the sakabatou from under the bed and then headed out the door at a near run.

__

Damnit Toby, Kenshin thought viciously. _What games are you playing_?

And, _I really prefer problems I can solve just by beating them up._

--

The 'assisted living center' was fifteen minutes away by cab. Kenshin paid the driver with his credit card then took the steps up to facility's the lobby two at a time.

Inside, an old man snoozed in a wheelchair. It was just past eight in the morning; Kenshin wondered if the man had been there all night or if he had fallen asleep after breakfast. The air smelled faintly antiseptic, and a little bit of body odor and urine. It was also very cold inside -- he wondered of the heat was broken or if they had it turned down to save money. Kenshin frowned at that, knowing how miserable George was when it was chilly. Old bones liked warmth.

Resolve deepened, he strode to the front desk and said firmly, "I'd like to see George Trevor, please."

"Visiting hours," a bored receptionist said, without really looking at him. She pointed at a sign glued to the wall indicating visiting hours were ten to seven.

"He just called me in a panic," Kenshin said, "I'd like to make sure that he's okay."

"Visiting hours," the receptionist repeated. "You'll have to come back ..."

"Grandpa!"

Kenshin spun around in time to see George come stumbling out of a hallway and head straight for him. Kenshin gave the receiptionist a concerned look, but she didn't seem surprised by the word _grandpa _-- likely, she heard similarly confused-sounding outbursts from many of the residents on a regular basis.

George had lost weight, Kenshin thought. His shoulders were more bent, and his fingers were splinted. He tottered as he walked, more than before -- Kenshin had just seen him a few months ago, and was shocked by how unsteady on his feet that he seemed now.

George reached him and wrapped his arms around Kenshin in a ferocious hug. "I didn't know you were in town ..." George sounded like he was crying. "I didn't want to call you with you overseas. My great-granddaughter needs you more than I do. I'm sorry, I'm sorry ..."

"I just got in last night." Kenshin returned the hug. He was alarmed by how bony and frail George felt. Also, he was dressed only in lightweight trousers and a thin t-shirt and was shivering in the cool air of the institution -- Kenshin frowned further. "Do you have a sweater?"

"Yeah, in my room. The boiler's been broken for a week." George finally let go of Kenshin. "God, Ken-nii, it's so good to see you."

"Mmm. Yes, I've been worried about you."

"It is Ken-nii?" He asked, very low, with a significant glance at Kenshin's hair.

Any concern that Kenshin might have had about George's mental state evaporated with that simple question. "The paperwork I'll need to reference is all Kenny Myojin's name, so yes, that's fine right now. Once we're out of here, I'm ..." he had to think for a minute, "... Jimmy Yamada. Morgan is Nicole Yamada." Kenshin surveyed George critically. He needed a shower, too, and he had a bad bruise under one eye. "What happened here?"

"Fell." George grumbled. "I got mad and they gave me fucking thorazine. Then I had to take a piss and I fell."

"Thorazine?"

George uttered a string of offended obscenities. "... I'm old, not _nuts_!"

"Yeah." Kenshin agreed with that. "What did they do to piss you off?"

"Took away my chess set," George said, unhappily.

"... what?" Kenshin shook his head. Why wouldn't they want to stop him playing with his chess set? George would amuse himself for hours figuring out chess moves. Kenshin suspected it was akin to meditation the old man -- a way to quiet and focus his thoughts. "Why?"

"Because I was staying up late with it. There's nothing else to do here unless you want to watch the telly." George had his fists balled. "I was hurting no one, I just couldn't sleep. I was only sitting up in my room. It was only ten PM!"

Kenshin sighed. "Okay, that's it. I'm getting you out of here."

"Toby told them not to let me leave." George said, with real anger. "I wanted to take a cab to the pub and they wouldn't let me! I miss the boys!"

'The boys' would be, Kenshin guessed, George's cronies from his childhood. There were three or four of them left alive still. George, of aristocratic roots and possessing quite a formidable title, had somehow fallen in with a pack of neighborhood brats of decidedly lower birth. Kenshin strongly suspected his son had some influence in that; Kenji hadn't thought much of the children of his peers and might well have steered George towards more wholesome influences.

He'd known those 'boys' for over eighty years. Yeah, he certainly missed them.

"You're competent, right?" Kenshin said, with a smile. "If you're not, then it's _my _decision if you leave or not. Either way, we're covered legally."

George exhaled sharply. "Hell, Ken-nii, I've missed you. You're right."

"Then let us go get your stuff." Kenshin decided that George was in less danger tagging along after him for a few days than hanging out here, assassins or no assassins. The bruise under George's eye bothered him; instead of simply a bit of a shiner he might just as easily have had a fatal head injury or a broken hip or arm. Old bones were fragile. Besides, he wasn't convinced that the bad guys wouldn't have another go at George given how publicly they'd attacked Morgan.

"You can't go back there ..." the receptionist said. She had one hand on a phone. Kenshin knew she'd been talking to her superiors.

Kenshin smiled and said politely, "Unless you plan to call the police, you will not stop this one. And if you call the police, explaining why George has been held prisoner at the request of his grandson, who is not legally his guardian, would be interesting."

He caught his hand under George's elbow -- George normally walked with a cane, but wasn't today, likely because his fingers were so badly broken. Ignoring her protests he guided George back towards his room.

"I want my phone back."

"We'll get it," Kenshin promised.

"And my chess set."

"That, too."

"And breakfast?" George said, hopefully, with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes. "The food here's terrible."

"My treat."

"And a puppy?" He hit a perfectly childlike note of _whine_.

"Now you're pushing it, Georgie-kun." It felt good to laugh. He hadn't been doing much of that, lately.

George chuckled. "I've missed you, Grandpa."

--


	26. Chapter 26

George had never seen Kenshin with dark hair before. He watched his great-grandfather surreptitiously, as the bellhop unloaded his bags and boxes of stuff onto a trolley. Kenshin just didn't look like himself.

The happy, smiling, goofy man that George was familiar with and loved dearly was absent -- Kenshin was deadly serious, sober, and almost scary in his intensity. Kenshin's dark hair, cut just slightly past his collarbone, blew forward into his face when a raw wind gusted. His eyes gleamed beneath those bangs - keen, wary, and fierce.

"George, please lean on me." Kenshin offered George his shoulder. His voice was polite, but somehow terse. George took the proffered shoulder -- he was tired and shaky, worn out from the scene at the nursing home, though he wasn't about to admit just _how _exhausted he was.

Kenshin had adroitly handed the nursing home's objections by calling his solicitor and having the man fax over various legal papers that said that Kenshin was George's legal guardian if George couldn't take care of his affairs anymore.

__

And that's an unpleasant thought.

He ran through several chess moves in his head, a couple of intricate _Go _plays, and then recalled _pi _to twenty digits. Yeah, the brains were working, even if nothing else was. He was certain he could handle his own legal affairs. He hadn't been declared incompetent, and he was certain his mental abilities were all intact.

The home had still persisted in treating him as if he was a grey-haired child. George had been annoyed, but resigned: he'd learned years ago that people assumed that being physically frail and elderly meant that mentally incapacitated. Kenshin had been angry about the home's behavior, surprising George: he knew the signs of Kenshin's anger fairly well; the quiet stillness, and the short, precise sentences stripped of any soft words or formality. Kenshin had been downright curt to the administrators, at the end; anyone else would have been in a towering rage. Still, he hadn't expected his great-grandfather to be so furious on his behalf. Kenshin was normally easy-going to a fault.

Inside the building, Kenshin thrust a couple of folded bills at the bellhop, "Please, deliver our things to our room ..." Kenshin gave the number, then pulled George aside into alcove off the hallway that held ice, soda, and snack machines. "I didn't want to say anything in front of the taxi driver, but Richie's here. He's like me."

"Immortal?" George guessed, after briefly considering and then dismissing _Japanese _as being the 'like me' that Kenshin was referring to. Kenshin, while almost arrogantly proud of being Japanese, didn't generally consider other people's nationalities worth commenting on, much less giving any sort of warning.

"Yes." Kenshin impatiently brushed his hair out of his eyes -- then shoved a hand into his pocket, came up with a rubber band, and pulled his hair back into a messy pony tail. His bangs needed trimming and George didn't see how tying his hair back really helped Kenshin see better, though he was obviously irritated by having his hair down. "I wanted you to know, in case anything happens."

_Translation: If someone comes after Morgan, get out of the way and let the Immortals handle it. _He nodded understanding, though if anyone attacked them, he was perfectly willing to do what he could to defend the girl. Kenshin wasn't the only one with a claim to protecting his descendents. And he owed her, because he'd talked at the end, to Dall. He'd told where she was knowing Kenshin could most likely handle it ... really, praying that Kenshin could, because he, himself, could not take anymore pain or fear.

__

I failed. I should have let him kill me. I'm old; she isn't. This mess is my fault -- they'd still be safe in Seacouver if I hadn't broken.

He averted his eyes from Kenshin's steady gaze, shame making him flush. Kenshin hadn't said one word of recrimination, and likely didn't blame him, and that just made it worse. Kenshin, George was pretty sure, would _never _break no matter how horrible the torture. "I understand what you are saying, Ken-nii."

"Good," Kenshin said. He started to scratch his jaw, then dropped his hand to his side. The motion drew George's attention to the disguise that Kenshin was wearing. It was a good one -- George had recognized him by his height and build alone.

Here, under harsh artificial lights, George could better see that Kenshin had hidden his scar with makeup. He'd done a very good job -- you couldn't tell he was wearing anything until you were at very close range. The makeup made him look younger because it masked what few age-related blemishes he had on his face. Kenshin's eyes, however, were not the eyes of a teenager. The effect was a little disconcerting.

"Richie hosted Morgan for me in Seacouver. He's a good friend. He's about forty, though he's like me -- he died young. He looks like a teen."

"Bet Morgan likes that," George snickered. He knew the girl well enough to know what her reaction would be to another 'teenager' -- he wondered if she'd hit on Kenshin yet. Kenshin was very good at deflecting feminine interest, but still, it was an amusing thought.

"Richie's a good guy; he won't do anything even if she makes a pass at him." Kenshin said that with confidence. "And we haven't told her about our Immortality yet, and I'd appreciate if you kept that quiet."

George thought that didn't bear commenting on. He'd known Kenshin's secret all his life and he'd never told anyone. However, since they had a minute to themselves, he changed the subject and asked, "What's this about you and Carrie Seta?"

Kenshin's eyes widened. He _blushed_. The makeup on his face hid the red flush there, but his neck turned pink. George cackled in vast, deep amusement. "Ken-nii has a girlfriend! Ken-nii has a girlfriend!"

"Yes, I do," Kenshin said, more-or-less calmly Then he said quietly, and in a much more sober tone, "Carrie's ... special. George, I am a hundred percent convinced that Carrie is Kaoru's reincarnation."

George blinked. That was unexpected. He had no memory of Kaoru, but Kenshin had occasionally spoken of her. He'd talked about her more after George's own wife had died in the sixties, and Kenshin and Atsuko had come to visit them. They'd spent long evenings drinking beer and talking about women, love, and memories. George wondered if Kenshin knew how much those conversations had helped him -- nobody else had wanted to even mention the subject of his late wife. It had eased the pain, a bit, to talk about her with someone who'd had a similarly almost-unbearable loss.

Kenshin added, "And she figured it out on her own with help from a ghost ..." he made a curiously rude and vague hand-flipping gesture at the heavens, "... confirming my suspicions."

"That's weird." George frowned at him. The thought of his own late wife returning in the body of a young woman was vaguely unsettling. On the other hand, he remembered the soft, sorrowful tone in Kenshin's voice when the subject of Kaoru had come up between them, in the past. _He's happy. _George blinked. _He's healing, finally, after all these years._

"My _life _is weird, Georgie-kun," Kenshin said, a trace of humor finally touching his eyes. "Carrie is Kaoru's reincarnation, and she is Immortal. There is no way to describe how truly happy this makes me."

George lifted both eyebrows. Then he grinned, mischief temporarily trumping guilt, and because he hoped it would fluster Kenshin, he asked, "So she's pretty?"

"Oh, yeah. Very." Kenshin's shoulders sagged in obvious relief, and no embarrassment. Well, George had _tried _-- though Kenshin wasn't always easy to tease, because he tended to be so accepting of everything in his life. Kenshin continued, "She is very beautiful -- and funny and fiesty; she reminds me so very much of Kaoru. Though she's a lot better with a sword this time around -- and she's about a foot taller than me. Someday soon, she's going to beat me in a sparring match."

George snickered. "And you'll love it."

"Of course." Kenshin blinked innocently. "This one is attracted to women who beat him up."

George guffawed. Only Kenshin could deliver such a line with a perfectly straight face. Given some of the stories he'd heard about Kaoru, he wasn't entirely sure that Kenshin was joking, either. Which made it even funnier. "Sure, Ken-nii."

Kenshin ignored George's laughter with a supreme display of dignity. "What I actually wanted to talk to you about, before we got sidetracked, was Jeffrey Garret. Did you ever meet him?"

George's brief flash of good humor disappeared. He glanced furtively towards the direction of the hotel's front door, with reflexive fear that Morgan's parents might show up and overhear. Then he said shortly, "Yes. Good kid. Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he was just a _good _kid. Nothing at all like his father. A lot like his mother, who died when he was little."

"He was nine years older than she was," Kenshin said, lifting a questioning eyebrow at George. George knew Kenshin well enough to suspect he was simply asking questions rather than dismissing the relationship out of hand as blatantly wrong.

George shrugged, somewhat uneasily. He wasn't entirely comfortable with the age disparity there, but on the other hand, he was old enough to remember when many girls married very young -- and to older men. "Morgan's sixteen going on forty. I thought they were a good match. And they had a real good, solid plan for the future -- Jeffie really just wasn't the smartest kid. He was going to stay home and raise their children, and she was going to have a career. She told me about it, and Grandpa, it made sense, for both of them. Jeffie would have been a good father; by contrast, Morgan's got an IQ in the stratosphere, and a head for numbers. That kid could really go places if she got her act together."

"She is that intelligent?" Kenshin blinked.

George was taken a little aback that Kenshin hadn't figured that out yet, but he grinned and said, "She can beat me at _Go_."

Kenshin frowned. "I didn't know that. She's been refusing to do her schoolwork."

George wasn't particularly surprised by that. He'd been there, the night after Jeffrey had died -- had seen her, shattered and broken, and almost wordless with grief. At least part of his idea to send Morgan to Kenshin was that Kenshin was very good with troubled kids. He speculated, "That is probably because it's tied so integrally with Jeffie. In all seriousness, Ken-nii -- he had a trust fund that he'd gain access to when he turned twenty-five. He was going to pay for her college education with it, with the plan that she be the family's breadwinner. He hated his family and he wanted to leave them behind."

"You know a lot more about this than you let on before."

George blew out a sharp sigh. "I didn't think it was important. Not anymore. The boy's dead."

"This is true," Kenshin said, with a decidedly annoyed growl to his words. George mentally winced -- it took quite a bit to irritate Kenshin, and that was very definitely a noise of heartfelt aggravation. He continued, "Except for the fact that I like having the full picture of what I'm defending the girl against."

"Sorry." George couldn't bring himself to meet Kenshin's eyes. "I had my reasons for being circumspect."

"Circumspect." Kenshin shook his head, making his loose bangs swish across his eyes. They shadowed his gaze; George realized he was wearing dark contacts for the first time. It was a funny thing to miss, because Kenshin's eye color was so distinctive, but the brown irises matched Kenshin's Asian facial features. You noticed his pale eyes because they were so strikingly unusual against the olive of his skin; brown just looked ordinary. "From me? What do you know, George, that I _should_?"

George hesitated for a long, long moment. Memories of fights and angry words welled up. "Just that her parents are idiots."

"I'd already assumed that."

"I'm sorry they're my family."

"I've known that feeling a few times."

"They're going to assume the worst when they meet you. I told them I knew you from the 1960's, when you lived with me. Which is entirely the truth, mind, just not _all _of it."

Kenshin vented an exasperated hiss between his teeth. "I just told the kid I'd talk to her parents about the baby. _That _is going to be an interesting conversation. And I'm in no mood to tell any more lies."

--

Kenshin was annoyed in general as he guided George up to the hotel room. George wasn't telling him the whole truth; he just didn't know what the old man found worthy of keeping a secret.

George looked tired, at any rate, and Kenshin resolved he'd ask more questions later. George was a terrible liar -- getting information out of him was generally a matter of simply asking the right questions. Unfortunately, he just didn't know what questions to ask.

He felt Richie's buzz -- the other Immortal opened the door quickly and looked out. "Ken."

"Richie, this is George Trevor ..."

"Grampy!" Morgan barreled past Richie and threw her arms around George in an ecstatic hug. It was the first time, Kenshin realized, that he'd ever seen the girl show any signs of joy. "Grampy! You're here!"

"Kiddo," George hugged her awkwardly back, clearly hurting. "I've missed you."

--

"In December?" George said, confirming Morgan's due date. He held a cup of hot coffee awkwardly in his battered, bandaged hands -- Kenshin had offered to help him, and George had waved him off. Kenshin had declined to pursue the issue, though he was expecting the coffee to hit the ground sooner or later. He didn't think that the coffee was warm enough to burn anyone, and he figured the worst that George could therefore do was drop it. Messes were easier to fix than wounded pride.

Morgan nodded shyly. "Yeah. A girl."

"I'm getting old when my great-granddaughter is expecting a child."

"You were a tad young when you started yourself," Kenshin pointed out, without looking up from his computer screen. He was reading the web sites of several adult-care organizations. George couldn't stay with them -- it was too dangerous. He needed to find a couple of very trustworthy people to take care of him -- not just to physically care for him, but to run interference with the family as well.

"You're not old, Grampy!" Morgan protested, almost at the same instant.

George cackled. "Kind of you to say, kiddo. -- Morgan, what he means was I was a fifteen year old father and I joined the navy and went to war to support the baby. But times were different then."

"At fifteen?" Morgan's eyes were huge.

"In the middle of the war," Kenshin pointed out, "He lied to join, but I don't think they were being real choosy about the ages of the soldiers." _And in a war, adulthood comes early and hard._

He'd been in Japan during the war, but he had heard later about George's decisions. George had made some teenage mistakes and some adult choices to correct them. He'd married the girl, provided for the child -- and had nearly destroyed his own soul in the war. George, once fluent in Japanese, had never spoken the language since. Kenshin knew he'd been involved with the interrogation of prisoners. He didn't need to know the details, beyond that.

"Yeah." George sobered, and Kenshin felt a flash of guilt at reminding him.

George didn't talk about those years -- ever. Well, Kenshin knew those feelings fairly well. He didn't tell war stories himself without a good reason; some things were best left unspoken. He changed the subject to a brighter one, "Morgan, have you thought of a name for the baby?"

Her eyes widened, and then she shook her head. "No."

"Ought to name her Tabitha, after m'wife."

"Sounds like a _cat's _name," she shot her great-grandfather an annoyed look.

"Hey! I liked Tabby's name."

Richie snorted at George's mock indignation. "Are you guys hungry? I'm going to get something to eat."

"Pizza?" Morgan said, eagerly.

"If you'll actually _eat _it," he teased her. "For someone who's eating for two, you sure don't have much of an appetite."

Morgan folded her arms and stuck her tongue out at him.

Richie grinned, and rose, and walked towards the table by the window. His wallet was on it, and his sword leaning against a chair next to it. Kenshin was a little surprised that Morgan hadn't yet commented on the swords; on the other hand, she'd seen him defend her with one, and she was aware that they were both martial artists. Maybe she was just taking the blades for granted. Morgan followed him, "I want pepperoni and olives on mine ... and mushrooms ..."

The hotel faced another building. Kenshin caught a flash of movement -- a glint of steel, the silhouette of an arm. Perhaps it was nothing. But he was already moving, reflexes and experience and pure instinct screaming _attack_. He didn't have time to deflect the bullet with his sword. He saw a muzzle flash when he was one short stride from Morgan.

He knew his bulk wasn't much; a bullet could go right through him -- particularly one shot from a sniper's rifle. He twisted in the air, presenting his rib cage sideways to the slug.

The impact was like being kicked by a horse. He hit Morgan, and both of them fell to the ground. She was screaming ... his ears were ringing, his vision dimming to a pinpoint. His heart raced and he felt heat pouring down his side: blood. He couldn't seem to breath.

"Kenshin!" Richie yanked the curtains shut with speed that would have nearly equaled Kenshin's own.

"He's shot! He's shot! He's shot!" Morgan howled.

George said, impatiently, "Oh, shut up. He'll be fine."

Richie bent over him. Kenshin couldn't quite focus on his face but he managed to force a breath out, and whisper, "Get them out of here ..."

He couldn't seem to draw another breath back in. It hurt. He wanted to cough, but he didn't have the energy for that.

"Shut up, you fool!" George shouted at Morgan. "You want somebody to call the cops?"

"Yes!" She was crying. "He needs a doctor! Somebody call the police!"

"No, her _doesn't_!" Richie snarled at her. "Shut the fuck up, Morgan. He's already dead. Screaming will only make things more complicated."

He didn't think he was dead yet ... but there was warm and welcoming light, summoning him. Behind him, he heard Richie swear, "Fuck! He always does this to me! I swear, he plans it!"

Ahead, coming from that warm and welcoming light, there was merry laughter. A figure appeared. He quit fighting this death: it was inevitable.

And she would laugh at him, if he kept trying.


	27. Chapter 27

"Atsuko," Kenshin wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her shoulder, and let out a ragged sigh. She felt so good: familiar, warm, a part of his life for six decades and his lover for thirteen years. Even her smell was familiar -- lavender scented shampoo, baby powder deodorant, and the pleasant odors of her makeup.

"Ken," she hugged him back, arms tight. "You know, I'm supposed to mysterious and ghostly here."

He snorted. "You never were orthodox about anything."

He was amused to see she looked exactly the age he'd seen her last -- most of his friends and family chose to appear younger. Hiko had been twenty-ish; younger, even, than when he had raised Kenshin. Well, Atsuko had been happy inside her own skin and comfortable with her age.

She leaned back, though, and brushed his bangs back from his eyes. His hair was red, here -- because he saw himself as red-haired and pale-eyed, even when he was wearing a disguise. "Hiko's moved on, by the way."

"Gods," Kenshin said, fervently, distracted by that thought. "I'd bet a couple litres of the best _sake _that I'll look into some man's eyes and see Hiko looking back at me in the next few decades."

Atsuko snickered. Apparently, she found this amusing. "Maybe you'll find him as a child and you can return the favor of your upbringing and torture him back for everything he did to you."

"I am not nearly that vindictive."

"You find the idea funny, admit it."

"Well, yes." He pressed his forehead to hers. He wanted to kiss her, but it seemed weird. He'd given his heart and his word to another now. And yet she was, and would always be, his wife. Would it unfaithful to Carrie if he swept Atsuko into his arms and kissed her soundly and thoroughly and told her how very much he missed her and loved her?

"Don't forget that I know about Carrie." Atsuko whispered. She wasn't reading his mind; she just knew him very well. "It's okay, Ken."

His relief was instant. She understood. He hadn't, until this moment, been sure she would. Atsuko had strong opinions -- and she was sometimes unpredictable. It was funny how well she could read him, when sometimes he, who was generally very good at understanding people, couldn't figure her out at all.

"I thought I felt you watching us, a few times." Kenshin tried to let go of her, but she wouldn't release her grasp on him. Because he needed to know for sure, he asked, "Are you jealous?"

"No." She ran her fingers through his bangs with her free hand. The other had dropped to his hip, tugging him close to her. "I'm _glad_, Ken. Carrie suits you well. You are happy with her. You deserve happiness, and Carrie is Kaoru's reincarnation. You've never _stopped _loving her. You didn't have to, to love me, too."

He blinked, at that. "I was worried you would not approve."

"I am jealous." She chuckled, low and throaty. The admission seemed to come with quite a bit of private amusement. "But only because I wish I could _be _her -- she'll have you forever. I only had you for a few mortal years. It's not the same, it can never be the same. But I'm also a little worried -- about you, more than her -- because she is very young, Kenshin. She is ... inexperienced. Mind, I'm not referring to bedroom skills, but with life in general. She will make mistakes, and she will misunderstand you at times, and it worries me. You will give her your heart totally, and she may end up hurting you because she lacks the life experience to understand who you really are."

Ruefully, he said, "I'm more worried about _hurting _her, than being hurt by her. She's got a hot temper but she's as loyal as I am. Kaoru ... Kaoru followed me across half of Japan, once, and across half the globe, later. Carrie is much the same."

"Then why isn't she with you now?"

"Because I wouldn't let her come." Kenshin shook his head. "Atsuko, she's got school."

"She's also a grownup, Ken." Atsuko said, chidingly. "You made a decision for her, as if she were a child."

He winced, because he hadn't been comfortable with his own actions and Atsuko's words stung a bit. However, he tried to explain. "She's young. She would follow me blindly, unthinking of her future. You're right about her lacking experience and perspective. I don't want her getting hurt ... I don't want her ruining her chances at a good education. At being a _doctor_."

"Well, at least you're not claiming she'd be in the way." Atsuko said, acerbically. "You never tried to tell _me _what to do. You gave suggestions, but you never gave orders, and you never circumvented my wishes. What's different between me and her?"

"She's younger." He let go of Atsuko, and this time, she allowed him to pull away. He felt needled, and uneasy; Atsuko clearly was annoyed with him. He had a sick feeling she might be right, too, but he just didn't see any other solutions. She was correct in that he'd never told her what to do with her life beyond giving reasoned advice. With Carrie, he'd simply laid down the law: she would not be allowed to come. Had he been wrong?

"Younger." Atsuko repeated. "I bet she'd be pissed if you gave that as a reason for making decisions for her." Atsuko drummed her finger against her upper lip. "And hurt. Maybe more hurt than angry. I know I'd be pretty damn wounded, myself." She paused, then said, "What happened to the Kenshin I knew, the one who let experience be the best teacher?"

He flinched. "Atsuko, I cannot ... I must help Morgan."

"Morgan." Atsuko snorted. "I don't like that girl."

"She's one of mine. I'm oathsworn."

"You and your damned honor. You know what I think? I think your loyalty is misplaced and misguided."

He stared at her in shock. "Atsuko, they're trying to _kill _Morgan. I can't turn my back on her."

"Ever wonder what she did, precisely, to piss off Garret so badly?"

"Yes," he ground out, "I have. Do you know?"

She frowned. "No, I don't. And Garret's got some pretty formidable defenses on his property ... he must be afraid of the afterlife."

"Defenses?"

"There are ways to keep spirits away."

He could feel a tug at his soul now. "Atsuko, I have to leave ... I will always love you."

She stared past him, eyes suddenly distant. She nodded, once. "I know. I won't be here, the next time you croak, you know."

"Then ..." By sheer force of will he resisted the return to the living world.

"This is good bye." She reached a hand out, brushed it down his cheek. "I'm being called on be in the world again too. I don't know if our paths will ever cross again."

"Atsuko ..."

She smiled, a brave smile, though he saw pain in her eyes. It was a pain echoed in his heart. "I had a choice -- I could watch over you or I could return to the world and make a difference in it again. I couldn't do both."

She'd chosen 'the world' over him. He wasn't even surprised. He was also proud of her for that decision -- it was the right one, for her. The world needed heroes a lot more than he needed her support. He nodded quiet acceptance of her words, and did not let on that this also hurt. Even though he knew, understood, and agreed with her choice, it felt a bit like a rejection. As he had always known she would, she had chosen 'the world' over him.

"We're a lot a like, you and I," she touched his scar with two fingers, tracing it. "The thing is, Ken, you need to decide where you're needed most."

"Aa," he breathed.

"I love you, Himura Kenshin." There was finality to her words. Oh, he'd said goodbye to her before -- but it was with the knowledge that she might be watching him, and that he could very well see her in the afterlife.

"Sayonara, my wife."

She smiled. And then it was cold, and she was gone.

--

Kenshin woke to the awareness of rough fabric under his cheek, and motion. A car, he identified. Muzzily, confused, for a moment he though his head was in Atsuko's lap.

Atsuko was gone.

He remembered this with bitter finality. Never again would he bury his face in her hair and drink in the comfort she represented.

Carrie? He thought, trying to figure out where he was before he moved. His head was resting on a feminine thigh clad in jeans -- the muscles weren't defined enough to be masculine.

_Too soft for Carrie_. _Damn. I died. The bullet. Whose lap? Where?_

He lifted his head, deciding no answers would be forthcoming until he moved. He was looking at the back seat of a vehicle -- closely cropped, curly red hair was visible over the top of it. That would be Richie, in the passenger seat.

No, he corrected himself, Richie was _driving_. This was England, so the driver was on the right. Judging by the vibrations of the car and the timbre of the engine, he was moving at a high rate of speed.

"He's awake!" Morgan crowed, causing an instant headache to bloom behind Kenshin's eyes. He now knew whose lap he'd been held in. His mouth was so dry that his tongue was sticking to the roof, and he felt weak, nauseated, and shaky. All in all, it was rather like a hangover. And he found that being held by Morgan vaguely unsettled him.

"Told you so," George said, from the passenger seat in the front.

Kenshin tried to push himself upright. Morgan's hand shoved him back down into her lap. "Shh. Rest."

"Let me up," he growled at her, "I need to talk to Richie and George."

"You just ... you just died. Don't you think you should rest?" She said, tremulously.

"I'm fine."

"He's lying, but let him up," Richie said, from the front seat. He thrust his hand back at them. "Here." Richie had a bottle of water -- Kenshin struggled to an upright position and grabbed it with far more urgency than grace. He was dehydrated from blood loss. He downed the water in two gulps, then took better stock of his surroundings.

The car was on a country road he recognized -- they weren't far from the Trevor family home.

"Did you steal this vehicle?" Kenshin asked, with a bit of censor in his voice. His voice was hoarse; he coughed, tasted old blood, and realized he wasn't entirely healed. He must have taken one hell of an injury.

"Oh, don't go all moral on me, Ken," Richie said, with a bit of snicker in his voice. "Or I'll tell them how we met." He paused, then added to the other two, "Behind that choir-boy act there's a real punk, y'know."

"I did what was necessary." Kenshin said, then added, "It was only a car."

"It was MacLeod's _Thunderbird_. I'm still amazed he didn't Challenge you over that stunt. And I know you have quite a love for old cars yourself; you can't convince me you didn't swipe that thing because it was cool." Richie snickered. Then he added, "Take it easy back there for a bit. That was quite a hit you took."

Stiffly, Kenshin said, "It was the easiest vehicle to steal without permanent damage. It was too old to have an ignition lock."

"It's like a miracle!" Morgan said, voice excited. "I thought you were just an ordinary guy ..."

He glanced over at her, alerted by something in her tone of voice. Her eyes were shining, and focused entirely on him. "You're, like, something magical."

"Heh. So magical he gets his ass killed about every two weeks." That was Richie. Kenshin could have kissed him for that snarky comment; he wanted to be no-one's hero. Richie continued, "For someone who's supposed to be the absolute best of the best at fighting, he spends an awful lot of time dead."

Kenshin snorted. "I'll have you know it's been at least seven years. And you're bad luck, Richie-kun."

"Yeah. You owe me another shirt, too. This one's covered in your blood." Richie flipped on a turn signal and then passed a little bitty economy car with a zooming roar of engines. Whatever he had stolen had horsepower -- Kenshin thought it might be a small, zippy SUV.

He ignored Richie's words as not worthy of a response. Instead, he asked, "How long have I been out?"

"Half an hour." That was George. "Ken-nii, I must say, even knowing you're Immortal ... watching you die is disturbing."

Kenshin said, "Being the one dying is worse. -- Did you get a look at the shooter, either of you?"

"No, he was in the building across the street. I'd like to know how he found us." Richie's voice had a distinct growl to it.

The car they'd just passed was now tailgating them. Kenshin twisted around, then his eyes widened when he saw the glint of a gun barrel. He roughly grabbed Morgan by the arm and yanked her down onto the seat just as the rear window exploded. More bullets thudded into the SUV's tailgate.

Richie grunted. Then he slammed on the brakes. The vehicle behind them plowed into the SUV's rear bumper, hard enough that Kenshin, who was not wearing a seat belt, was flung into the back of the seats in front of them. Richie hit the gas again.

"You shot, Richie?" he asked.

"I'll survive." Apparently, it wasn't serious. Richie was obviously focused on driving -- he careened around a corner almost on two wheels.

"George, you okay?"

"Fuck," George said. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry. I should have..."

"... what, left me to rot in that home? I was a sitting duck there, if Morgan's little friends decided to come after me again." George said. "I told Richie we should go to the country home."

"They're not my friends!"

"They'll find us there, for sure ..." Kenshin protested, ignoring Morgan's outburst. She sounded close to tears, but he didn't have time to sooth her. She'd just have to deal with her upset herself. He was more concerned by their plans: It was an obvious place to hide, and the people after them were demonstrably armed and dangerous.

"... I've got a couple of guns there. Hunting rifles. Shotguns. They're licensed." George sounded slightly defensive. Kenshin wholly understood that -- gun ownership laws in Britain were a bit strict. "If they come after us, we can make a stand."

"And then what?" Kenshin sighed. Once upon a time, he would simply have started busting heads until he made the bad guys see reason. Life was so much more complicated, now. He saw all sorts of flaws in their plan, starting with the fact that the old country home was not exactly built for defense. It had big windows on the ground floor.

"Do you have a better idea?" Richie said, somewhat defensively.

"Get another hotel room, somewhere where they take cash only. With false names. We take Morgan down to talk to the police tomorrow, and then we leave town entirely." Kenshin brushed broken glass from his arm. The SUV seemed to have acquired an odd shimmy and some strange rattling noises from the collision, but the smaller car wasn't following them. "Morgan, be still. You've got glass in your hair."

"Richie's shot." She was staring at a red stain growing on his arm.

"He'll survive," Kenshin said. He picked what shards he could see out of her ponytail; his fingers were sticky with blood, and he hoped she didn't notice that. Better his blood in her hair than hers, however, from a cut from the shards of the rear window.

She started to sit up.

"Keep your head down," he pushed her back down. She whimpered something wordless and frightened, and buried her face against his chest. He winced as she jostled him; his body was far from healed. Also, he was sticky with gore. She didn't seem to notice, however, and started sobbing softly.

_Poor kid,_ he thought, smoothing her hair. He was sympathetic, really, just somewhat distracted at the moment.

Suddenly, up front, Richie said explosively: "Fuck!"

Kenshin lifted his head up, and peered over the seat. In the SUV's rear view mirror he could see flashing red and blue lights. He twisted around to see that they had a police officer closing on them at a fairly high rate of speed.

Richie's obscenity seemed appropriate, Kenshin thought. All of them were covered in blood, and they were in a stolen car. And they were carrying fake IDs. A local constable was just about the last person Kenshin wanted to see at the moment. He was afraid that this might be unpleasant.

"I'm going to try to outrun him ..." Richie said. He stomped the gas, suiting actions to words.

"No!" Kenshin said, shortly, "It's unlikely to work and we've got the mortals with us."

Morgan was pregnant. George, frail. He didn't want to risk a bad accident with either of them. Plus, there was the chance of innocent bystanders getting hurt. Better he and Richie sit in jail for awhile than the other two be injured. _Sorry, Richie_, he thought, _but you're the one who followed me._

Richie said something rude under his breath. Louder, he added, "Mac is going to _disown _me over this one."

"Mac will forgive you," Kenshin said. Mac's genuine paternal love for his young protégé was not something that Kenshin would ever doubt. Dark humor compelled him to add. "He might take my head, however, for getting you into this fix."

Richie pulled over, reluctantly, while continuing to grumble at a low volume.

Morgan, peering over the back seat, suddenly said, "It's Saito! Grampy, it's Officer Saito!"

George exhaled a soft sigh. Kenshin saw his shoulders sag. "Best news I've heard all day."

Kenshin looked over the back seat, startled by the name. _Saito._

The man approaching was tall, lean, with a narrow face right out of the darkest days of Kenshin's past. He moved with an air of command. And Kenshin would have bet every penny he owned that the man's heritage was not just Asian, but 100 percent Japanese.

"Megumi said I'd always know them ..." Kenshin closed his eyes and fought back an urge to indulge in hysterical giggles.

"What's that?" Richie said.

"Nevermind." Kenshin regarded Saito -- this generation's Saito -- with very mixed feelings. On one hand, he wanted to groan and pout and indulge in a very childish display of petulance. Saito was not one of his favorite people -- at a very core level, they had a basic conflict of personalities. He had respected Saito from a distance, but he had never been willing to call the man 'friend' and that sentiment had been decidedly mutual.

And dealing with Saito _now_ wasn't necessarily going to come out in their favor. Kenshin well remembered Saito's lack of tolerance for evil, and they were trapped in rather incriminating circumstances. Bloody, in a stolen car!

On the other hand, it was _Saito _-- Kenshin couldn't imagine anyone better to have on his side, if he could somehow convince the man that he wasn't a bad guy. And given the man's sheer force of personality, he seriously doubted that Saito had changed much.

The officer reached the car. His eyebrows climbed up his forehead when he got a good look at the bloody occupants of the vehicle.

Kenshin barely noticed.

Saito had a badge pinned on his chest. It said, "Himura S."

_Himura_. Given the way his life had been going lately, Kenshin doubted that the surname was a coincidence. The hands of fate had been meddling with his life a bit more than usual, of late.

_He got them to put his surname first_. Kenshin wanted to snicker, when he realized that._ George has mentioned a Saito Himura a few times, but I've never met him. I thought the given name was coincidence!_

"Officer Saito!" Morgan said, "Thank God! You're back!"

_Back_? Kenshin thought.

"I completed my tour of duty last month." Saito said, staring at Kenshin. His eyes had narrowed. He kept flicking quick glances at George, then keen looks at Kenshin."They had to give me my position back when I was discharged. -- You're all covered in blood."

George said, "We're fine, Saito. Nobody's hurt."

"Viscount, I pulled you over because this car's stolen." Saito hadn't relaxed a bit; he regarded Richie with profound wariness. He moved a bit, so he could see into the back seat; then he spotted the swords and took a cautious step back, hand dropping onto the hilt of his gun.

Kenshin made a snap judgment. "We need your help. We'll tell you the whole and complete story, but we need your help."

Richie spluttered, in the front seat. "Ken!"

"He's right," George said, "And I believe we can trust Saito with everything. I've known him since he was ten."

Saito, still very much _cop_ in his posture, said stiffly, "I need to ask all four of you to get out of the car."

They complied; Kenshin offered George his arm and supported him. George was a lot paler and more shaky than Kenshin would have liked, though his voice remained strong. Kenshin suspected his great-grandson was running on adrenalin. Richie looked resentful but Kenshin just resigned himself to 'cop doing his job' -- and a stolen car full of bloody people was enough to make any officer paranoid.

Saito retrieved the swords from the back seat. He gave Richie's Spanish sword only a cursory glance, despite its somewhat gaudy hilt. However, he pulled Kenshin's much less showy sakabatou halfway out of the scabbard and then gave Kenshin a narrow-eyed look. Kenshin realized he'd not only recognized the reversed-blade sword for what it was -- a very rare, valuable weapon -- but also correctly matched the weapon to its owner.

__

You have not changed a bit.

Saito said, quietly, in English-accented Japanese, "I am descended of samurai. This is a very special weapon. How did you obtain it?"

"It's mine," Kenshin said. "It was made by a master swordsmith named Iori."

"I recognized the maker." Saito, very much to Kenshin's shock, handed the sakabatou back to him. "And I also know what you are. And, likely, who."

"You ... do?" Richie spluttered.

George, who been quiet up to this point, said, "Very little about Saito surprises me. Ken-nii, he's a distant cousin of mine."

_Translation, _Kenshin thought, _he's telling me he is, in fact, one of the Himura descendents._

"Which is how we met," Saito said, mildly. He had relaxed after inspecting the swords. Kenshin suspected their lack of argument had served to prove that they were _not evil -- _Saito was giving off a warrior's ki, and he moved with the taut grace of a martial artist. Kenshin would have bet every dime he owned that Saito had already figured out exactly how good Kenshin and Richie would be in a fight. And, also, he knew not to discount George, even if George was old, and apparently a friend. He wasn't paying much attention to Morgan, but he definitely tracking what George was doing.

_He said he was discharged. He's a soldier, probably called up to active duty somewhere, then released when no longer needed, to go back to civilian life. _Kenshin recognized that sharp, battle-ready attitude. He knew the mentality. He'd lived it. So had Saito, a century ago, and he'd never quite lost that fierceness, then, either. Now, he clearly was so freshly off a battlefield somewhere that he was practically vibrating with nerves.

"I believe you are Himura Kenshin," Saito said. It wasn't really a question.

Kenshin gave Richie and George an uncertain look. Then he admitted, "Aa. I am."

Saito nodded, "I thought so. I am not surprised to find you in Viscount Trevor's company. "

"How did you know about ..." George blinked. "Ken-nii, I never told him. I swear!"

Apparently, Kenshin's thoughts on the matter were visible on his face. Richie said, "Ken, Is something wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Kenshin gave Saito a long, measuring look. With the other reincarnations, there had been differences in appearance; new names, new genetics. He had recognized them mostly from personality.

Saito could have walked right out of the Bakumatsu. He _was _Saito. Same hair style, same face, same expressions, same _ki_. And he was a _young _Saito -- he looked exactly like the man a young Battousai had crossed steel with, fighting to a draw more than once.

_Stubborn bastard, _Kenshin thought, still disgruntled by the whole thing. _You just don't change._

--

Saito sat crosslegged on the floor of his apartment -- which was large, furnished in a tasteful Japanese style, and had sharp, pointy weapons on the walls. He had relaxed a good bit, though this meant he was simply alert, not paranoid. Kenshin approved of that attitude; this would be a very good man to have at one's back in a fight.

"I met the Viscount when I was ten, as he said," Saito said, in that deceptively mild voice. Kenshin knew that there was a core of hard iron behind that quiet tone. "I was given an assignment to trace my family tree, and I got stuck with the Himura line. I couldn't find out anything about them. I thought Viscount Trevor might know something, and so I paid him a visit."

George, seated on the only chair in the room, grinned. "This somber little kid knocked on my front door and asked me if I knew anything about Himura Kenshin."

"I'm sure your reaction was interesting," Kenshin smiled at the thought.

"Yeah. It took me a minute to realize he was doing genealogy research." George scratched his jaw. "I gave him some copies of family photographs. Sent you a letter, too."

"Aa. I remember." Kenshin nodded. He addressed Saito, feeling very odd in saying this, "You're descended from Himura Yukio, correct?"

"Yes." Saito nodded. "George didn't tell me all that much, just some facts about you and Kaoru Kamiya. However, I was curious -- it's not every day one learns one is descended from a famous samurai. So I kept doing research."

He pulled a pack of cigarettes out and started to tap one out. George cleared his throat and said, "Saito-kun, do you mind? My granddaughter's pregnant."

Kenshin nearly bit his tongue. _Saito-kun. _He was wavering between disbelief, mild horror that _Saito _was his great-great-great-great-grandson, and vast amusement. George calling Saito _Saito-kun _nearly sent him into a fit of hysterical giggles. He sipped the tea that Saito had served, instead, and tried for a poker face.

He wondered what _was _showing on his expression -- Richie kept frowning at him.

Saito, with a frown, put his cigarettes away. "At any rate, when I started to research Kenshin Himura, I found some very odd things. There were newspaper accounts of the Kamiya dojo being burned down because it was believed he was a demon. Reportedly, he came back from the dead and he did not age."

Richie glanced at Kenshin -- and snickered. "It's a habit of his, I'll admit."

Kenshin wasn't in any laughing mood. Stiffly, he said, "They killed a very good friend of mine." Even with Sano's reincarnation sitting next to him, laughing, the mention of those dark days brought back profound pain.

Saito nodded. "Sanosuke Sagara. I'm sorry about that; it must have been a very hard thing for you. And then ... it was said you left town for England by the newspapers. But when I traced your path here, I found no record of you _arriving. _However, I did find that a cousin, Shinta Kamiya, accompanied your wife and children. A cousin with red hair, and a scar on his face."

"You're very good at research." Kenshin allowed.

"He's stubborn," George put in.

"I found photographs of Kenshin Himura in an archive in Japan. Curiously, when I compared those photographs to a paintings that Kenshin's adopted son did of 'Shinta Kamiya' ... it appeared to be the same man." Saito scratched his nose. "I was curious, but still thinking it was coincidence. However, I found that the Himura children -- including my great-great-grandfather Yukio -- had gone to school at a church. I was simply curious, and went to look for more information, and found letters and photographs archived at an Anglican church not far from here."

_Darius, _Kenshin thought.

"In one of the letters sent to Father Darius by Lady Jessica Trevor, she referred to Shinta as _Kenshin _and _Shinta _in the same letter -- I believe it was discussion of a surprise party for you, inviting Father Darius to attend. I think it was a slip she made, because she knew you as Kenshin, correct?"

"That would be most likely correct, yes."

"So how did you figure out he's Immortal?"

"I wanted to know if Father Darius had received any other correspondence about my ancestors. I traced him through several decades, and two different churches, and realized along the way that he, too, was not aging. I found quite a few pictures of the two of you together, by the way. You used various names, generally surnames related to people you knew in the past." Saito scratched his nose. "Took me a few years, but I found he did die in 1995."

"Yes." Kenshin said. That was a pain almost as profound as Sano's death. Darius had been one of the best of them all. "He was murdered."

"I understand that the killers were dealt with." The man who had once been the Wolf of Mibu gave Kenshin a decidedly feral grin. Kenshin wondered if Saito would have dealt with the problem himself, had MacLeod and Joe not gotten there first. For that matter, Ken wondered how he, himself would have reacted -- he'd found out that Darius was dead after the fact as well.

"However, by that time, I knew I was dealing with something supernatural." Saito nodded. "And I'd identified some associates of his who were, likely, also immortal. One of them talked, when I got him drunk, and I put the last of the clues together."

_Well, not all of them. _Kenshin wondered what Saito would think if Kenshin filled in the last holes in his history. _Once upon a time, you and I were respected enemies._

Morgan, who'd been deadly quiet for hours while Kenshin had filled Saito in, suddenly said, "Kenny, who _are _you?"

Kenshin hesitated. She'd heard more than enough to put all the clues together, but she likely wanted to hear it in simple words. Finally, he inclined his head and said, "Your great-great-great-great grandfather, kiddo. I'm a hundred and sixty-some years old."

"My great-grandfather," George clarified.

"And my great-great-great-grandfather," Saito said, with satisfaction. "Which makes me your distant cousin, Morgan, via Kenji's adoption, and the adoption of Himura Yukio."

Morgan blinked. Then, venomously, she snapped at Kenshin, "Damn you!" and lunged to her feet. She half-ran, half-stumbled into Saito's bathroom and slammed the door after her.

Saito blinked. Richie winced. George scowled. "Morgan!"

"Hormones," Kenshin said, unruffled.

"Pregnant," George said, running a hand over his face.

"Teen," Kenshin elaborated. Then he allowed, "And she's had a hell of a bad day."

Saito snorted. "That's an understatement. Did you see her computer?"

"Um?" Richie made a questioning noise.

Saito reached out and tugged Morgan's laptop out of her knapsack -- Kenshin was eternally grateful to Richie for having the presence of mind to grab their computers. His had plenty of confidential information on it that he didn't want the bad guys to get, ranging from his e-mail address book to his financial information. It was encrypted, but encryption could be broken.

Morgan's laptop was splintered, with a large hole through it. _Bullet_, Kenshin realized. He held the computer up and peered through it.

"Well, that's one way to toast a hard drive," Richie observed.

"Mmm. It was on the floor at her feet. When they started shooting at you, I suspect the bullet went right between her legs." Saito nodded at it. "She's quite lucky she wasn't badly hurt."

Kenshin shuddered. "I will be quite grateful when this is all over. After she gives her deposition on Monday, I'm taking her to Bora Bora."

"Really?" Richie said, with interest. Grinning, he said, "I need to work on my tan."

"No." Kenshin gave him an unamused look. This was so far beyond 'funny' that he found Richie's comments in very poor taste. Then, to Saito, he said, "You'll have to pardon this one for planning to tell no-one of our destination."

"Quite understandable." Saito nodded. "I would do the same. You do not know me well enough to trust me."

"Thank you." Kenshin glanced at the bathroom door. "She's angry because she thinks I deceived her."

"Well, you did, didn't you?"

Kenshin sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. I misled her about my nature. This was meant with the best of intentions, to protect this one and those this one loves. She doesn't understand what you just grasped so easily: Trust must be earned, not given by default. She's young."

"Stupid." Saito reached for his cigarettes, then remembered that the stupid girl was also pregnant, and simply patted his shirt pocket in a casual gesture.

"In some cases, that is synonymous with 'young' -- as this old samurai can attest from personal experience." Kenshin rose. "Thank you, for helping us."

Saito grinned. "I'm delighted to finally meet you. You look just like your photographs. Well, except for the hair -- but that's not a very good disguise, you know."

"I thought it works," George said. "And the makeup makes him look _twelve _and that helps. Nobody looks twice at children."

"He doesn't move like a child."

"I _don't _look like a child." Kenshin said, stiffly. "A teenager, perhaps."

"I don't know. If I hadn't recognized you when I walked up, I might have been turning you in as truant." A twinkle of humor lit Saito's eyes. "I will say that is a pleasure to meet you, finally."

Kenshin fought back a new urge for hysterical giggles. _Saito _-- Saito _Hajime _-- would never have said that it was a pleasure to meet. Or teased him about his appearance. Instead, he nodded. "And a pleasure to meet a descendent of my son. I think he would be very proud to be your ancestor."

"Or completely offended that Saito was a police officer and a soldier," George put in, with a snicker.

George had known Yukio, though Yukio had been older and George young. However, even when Yukio had been old and grey, he'd still been quite a rebel. Kenshin, finally, found himself cracking a smile. George was right. "Well, yes. Yukio wasn't exactly, how should I put this ..."

"He was a hell-raiser," George grinned.

"That would be accurate," Kenshin conceded.

"I saw his arrest record," Saito said, with a faint smile. "It was mostly minor offenses, for fighting with people. It sounded as if he had a hot temper."

"He was very much my son," Kenshin acknowledged. Yukio's temper had always had a justifiable trigger, but he was very good at _finding _those righteous causes.

"Kenshin," Richie protested, "You don't _have _a temper."

George guffawed into his cup of tea.

--


	28. Chapter 28

Carrie was seated alone at a table in the cafeteria, picking dispiritedly at a styrofoam plate of scrambled eggs and sausage links. Shannon watched her for a moment, noting that not once had she looked up from the plate. She was barely moving -- she was making only the minimum motion necessary to move the food from the plate to her mouth.

He wanted to hug her, but he suspected she'd smack him if he tried. The girl had an edge to her; he still couldn't figure out how Kenshin had so easily slipped inside her defenses. And it pissed him off no end that Kenshin had then walked away from her, and broken her heart. Kenshin had promised to return, but Shannon had heard other guys say similar things to girls. And when he was in a cynical mood, he wondered if Kenshin had actually meant what he had said to Carrie about returning.

_Not the first time I've seen a handsome, smooth-talking guy do this to a girl, _Shannon thought, darkly.

But it was _Kenshin _-- of course he would return. Right? He wanted to believe; it was romantic, and heroic, and if Kenshin came back, it would be a wonderful happy ending. And he liked happy endings. And he couldn't help but have faith in Kenshin.

But ... Carrie was barely moving. Margaret had said she wasn't studying, either -- she was going to classes, but after, she was just flopping on her bed

Finally, he approached, and set his own tray down on her table. She looked up at him, and said, "Hey, Shannon."

"You okay?" He spun a chair around, then straddled it backwards, resting his elbows on the table. Her voice was soft, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

She shrugged.

"He's rude to have left you like that." He just couldn't understand how Kenshin could leave her for what might well be an extended period. Carrie was a fantastic girl, and it had been clear to him that they thought the world of each other.

"He's not. He's right." She shoved the eggs around on her plate with a plastic fork. "I'd just be in the way if I followed."

"I think he's more worried about your classes. Which doesn't mean he's right, it just means should have stayed here with you and let the cops deal with the problem with that girl. That's what cops are for."

She lifted a shoulder up in half a shrug, neither conceding nor arguing the point. "My father wants me to go back to San Francisco. He's all sorts of pissed that Kenshin left, after Kenshin said he'd look after me. I thought I could take care of myself, but now ..."

"Families suck." He'd gotten a pleading e-mail from his mother that morning, begging him to try to talk to his father. He wasn't about to contact his dad; he knew damn well how that conversation would go. Badly.

"He's right, too. My dad, I mean." She hunched her shoulders. "I sparred with Mac last night. He killed me."

Shannon had a rather alarmed suspicion that she meant that literally. Her words confirmed this, "He's slower than I am. He's not very precise, compared to my father or Kenshin. But he ran me through with a sword and I never even saw it coming."

He couldn't help but shudder. He pictured her blood, spilling over shining steel; her mouth opening in shock; the light fading from her eyes. He'd seen that, once -- that terrible _fading _of life. Even if he knew she would come back, it was a horrible thing to watch.

She stabbed a chunk of egg, then cut it in half with the side of her fork. "The thing is, he's one of the good guys. He was just making a point to me, that technical ability with a sword isn't the same as battle experience. He backed into a weight stand and knocked it over, and when I was startled by that, he killed me. He put that sword of his right through my gut. It could just as easily have been my head in a real fight with someone out to get me. And it's that sort of real fight my father's scared about. Maybe I am, too."

"You guys are crazy. Did I ever tell you that?"

"I think the whole thing is nuts." She was chopping the piece of egg into ever smaller bits. "I just want to be a regular girl, Shannon. But my father's _so _right -- I could get into a fight here with someone bad, and he'd never even know it."

"He'd have to come through me," Shannon said, impulsively, instinctively.

"Shannon? If somebody comes after me with a sharp pointy object? Get _out of the way._" Her tone of voice brooked no argument, and made him blink. "You'd be a distraction, not a help, trust me. I've been training for this since I was four years old. Have you _ever _held a sword?"

"No, but ..."

She stabbed another chunk of egg. "Just ... stay out of the way, okay? I don't want you getting hurt. I like you; you're a nice guy."

He batted his eyes and lisped, "All the girls like us gay men."

She snorted a laugh, and he was pleased he had lightened her mood a bit. "I wasn't even thinking about that, actually. How's it going with Brandon?"

It was his turn to fight of a dark mood. He really didn't want to discuss the subject of Brandon.. "Okay, I guess."

"And your dad?"

"Has said not a word to me, but he didn't send me my allowance this month, so I suppose I'm officially on my own." He folded his arms. "I found a job, at the campus bookstore. Between that and my stipend as RA, I'm not going to starve. I start Monday."

"Will you have time for class?"

He sighed. "Less partying, more studying, I guess."

She vented an exasperated hiss. "I don't think I've ever been to a party in my life, you know."

Carrie sounded so annoyed at life in general. He found himself offering, "Well, I am going to a party this weekend, if you want to come."

She gave him a funny look. "What about Brandon?"

"Brandon," Shannon said, "would not get along with most of my friends. Inviting him to this party would be like dropping a match in a puddle of gasoline. Knowing him, he'd provoke a fight to prove a point -- and then I'd have to deal with the fallout later." He lifted a shoulder and shrugged. "Besides, Kenshin asked us to look out for you."

She blinked at him. "He did? I can take ..."

"Not the fighting stuff. And he didn't really need to ask, honestly." Shannon rested a hand on her arm. "Carrie, you shouldn't just mope alone because your boyfriend's off saving the world and wouldn't take you with him. Come and have some fun. It's allowed, you know."

"I don't know..." A hint of annoyance lit her blue eyes. "And I'm not moping."

"Good. Then you'll hang out with me."

"Okay ..." she said, uncertainly.

--

Kenshin sat alone at the kitchen table, listening to the sounds of the others sleeping.

George was curled up on the couch under two quilts -- he'd been complaining of being cold, despite the fact that Saito's apartment was relatively comfortable. Kenshin thought that George was far too thin; he had no insulation against even the slightest chill. One bandaged, splinted hand trailed over the edge of the couch, and Kenshin tried to avoid staring at it. He wasn't sure if George's fingers would ever heal; at his age, bones knit slowly if they did at all.

His breath was reassuringly regular, at least.

Kenshin wanted to get George out of harm's way -- but he was scared that the old man might be hurt by Garret. Anyone who'd try to kill a pregnant teenager would certainly not hesitate to injure an ornery old man. And they'd already targeted him once.

_Her parents could be in the line of fire, too, _Kenshin thought, _and Toby._

On Saito's floor, Richie was sleeping only lightly. Kenshin could sense the man's awareness -- it wasn't a very restful sleep, but the other Immortal was too nervous to really relax. Kenshin knew that mood; Richie would wake fighting if startled.

Saito was a little deeper asleep; Kenshin could hear the occasional soft snore from his room. However, if there was trouble, he knew Saito would be instantly awake as well. He had moved from shock to bemusement at this twist of events -- that Saito Hajime would be reborn as Himura Saito, his descendent and, apparently, his fan.

Morgan was not asleep, and he was unsurprised when she emerged from Saito's spare bedroom. She eyed him warily, then fished a cup out of Saito's dish-drainer and got herself a cup of water from the dispenser in Saito's refrigerator door.

"Morgan," Kenshin said, very low, "I want to talk to you."

"We'll wake the others."

"Outside." Saito had a small balcony on his flat; it had a view only of the brick wall of a building next door. Safe enough, and they would have a bit of privacy.

"I don't want to talk."

"This isn't a choice I am giving you." He rose and headed for the door. Richie, on the floor, lifted his head, blinked sleepily, apparently established there was no threat, and went back to sleep. George never stirred.

She followed him, arms folded It was the very first time he saw any resemblance in her to anyone of his family from the past -- not Kenji, but there was a bit of Jessica in the line of her angrily set jaw.

As soon as they were outside she snapped, "You lied to me."

He nodded. "Aa. I did. Morgon-dono ..."

I thought you were a nice guy who liked me." She wouldn't meet his eyes. Instead, she stared at the ground at his feet. "I thought you might be attracted to me an' that's why you were helping me. You _lied _to me. You told me you were some kid who survived a war ..."

Kenshin said quietly, "That wasn't a lie, Morgan. The war was over a century ago, but yes, I was a soldier in it. I was, I think, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old. No younger than twelve, no older than fifteen. You have seen me fight with a sword; I was an assassin, killing for political reasons."

"I thought it was recent." She scowled at him. "You _lied _to me. I thought -- I thought just maybe you were a cute guy who liked me! Even if you wouldn't ever date someone like me, I figured you thought I was cute! And that was your motive!"

He sighed. "Morgan, is the only reason you can imagine that anyone would want to help you is because they want to have sex with you?"

She turned bright pink and gave him a shocked look. "That's not it!"

"Then why are you surprised that we want to help you?"

She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around herself. "I ... I just don't know what you want. From me. Why are you doing this?"

"Because you need the help," he said, calmly. "And because a long time ago, I swore I would spend the rest of my life helping people. Morgan, I did some terrible things when I was young. I vowed I would atone, for the rest of my life."

Carrie -- or most of his few close friends and family such as George-- would snicker at this point and say something to the effect of, "Man, betcha would have phrased that oath different if you'd known you were Immortal." Or, sometimes, "The fates sure have a sense of humor, don't they?"

Morgan simply said, "Oh."

He added, trying to make her smile, "You thought I was cute?"

The look she gave him was utterly bleak. "So you're not even going to try to say you're helping me, for me? It's all about your sense of duty, then?"

"No!" He denied, even though she was right.

"You lie, again."

"I ..." It was devastating to realize she had figured this out. She must have seen his acknowledgment of the truth in his expression, and her own face clouded over with a storm of emotion. Sturdily, he said, "I barely know you, Morgan. I'd like to get to know you, but we haven't had time. You're right in that I consider it my duty to help you."

"And you probably won't, ever, get to know me. When this is over, you'll go back to Carrie. We probably won't ever see each other again. You _don't _care about me." She dashed tears away from her eyes with her fingers. "The only person who ever cared about me, for me, is Jeffrey. And now he's dead. And my life's a fucking nightmare."

"I'm sorry." That, at least, was an honest reaction. "I'm sorry about Jeffrey."

"He was a good guy." She hunched her shoulders. "He didn't deserve to be born into that sort of life. Money isn't everything it's cracked up to be, Kenshin."

He was surprised to hear that from her. Somehow, he'd thought her shallow.

She continued, bitterness in her words, "I'm not pretty. I don't have a sparkling personality. I'm not funny -- if I tell a joke, people tend to laugh _at _me, not _with _me. I don't have much to give to friends. But Jeffrey ... Jeffrey liked me anyway. And now he's dead."

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

"I don't have any friends. I don't even like my family -- I used to pretend I'd been switched at birth, y'know? Because they don't like me. I used to think there was a family out there that was mine, that would _like_ me. My mom thinks I'm a slut. My dad ..." she trailed off. "My dad only married my mom 'cuz she was pregnant with me. They hate each other, and he hates me. I don't know why they don't get divorced. Uncle Toby ... Uncle Toby wanted me to marry Jeffrey, but I think it was just 'cuz he wanted access to some of my boyfriend's money."

"I'm sorry." _Toby again_, he thought. Why was it that Toby's name kept coming up? Coincidence, perhaps. Toby was George's grandson and her uncle.

"Oh, stop the fucking apologies. You don't care either."

"But I do ..." he protested, somewhat weakly.

The look she gave him was scathing. "I'm _duty _to you, Kenshin. Nothing more."

"That's not entirely true ..."

"Oh, don't lie to me. _Again_."

"I never meant to hurt you."

"Well, you did." There was a petulant tone to her voice -- almost, but not quite, whiny. "Everybody hurts me."

"I'm sorry."

"Shut up. Just, shut up."

At that instant, his cell phone rang. He glanced at the display: Carrie. She had to know it was past eleven his time, so he was concerned that she might be in trouble.

"Morgan-dono, I need to take this call. It will just take a moment. I'm sorry."

"Just shut up."

He gave her a dismayed look, torn between letting Carrie's call go over to voice-mail and between his real need to know if she was in trouble. He wouldn't entirely put it past Garret to try to get to Morgan via Carrie and his friends in Seacouver. He snapped his cell phone open, "Moshi-moshi, Carrie?"

"Carrie," Morgan growled. She sounded wounded that he'd taken a call from Carrie in the middle of listening to her angst. "Your _girlfriend_."

"Ah ..." Carrie said, overhearing Morgan. She spoke in Japanese, "Trouble with the brat?"

"It's been a very rough day," he responded, in the same language. It was a relief to speak his native tongue. He still thought in Japanese, and translating to English was always a slight strain, no matter how good he was at it. "Carrie, is there trouble?"

"Not really, but I was hoping you had time to talk." She sounded sad, and lonely. And not alarmed; he was immediately relieved to avoid trouble.

He said regretfully, "Carrie, I'm sorry but I'll need to call you later tonight if it's not urgent."

To tell the truth, he wanted to talk to her -- he felt terrible about Morgan's accusations, and that they were true made it worse. He suspected she would be a wise and sympathetic ear. And if nothing else, he could vent at her.

"I've got to go to a study group in a bit. I just had a little time ..."

"How's school?" He had to ask. "Didn't you have a test coming up?"

"I passed it. I miss you, Kenshin." Her words were very quiet, and he heard pain in her words. Hers was a very different kind of misery from Morgan's. She wouldn't rage, or scream, not at him.

"Aa." He agreed. "I look forward to time with you, Carrie."

"I love you." She switched to English. Before he could respond, she added quickly, and far too cheerfully, "I'll talk to you later, then!"

"I ..." he hesitated, then said, in English, "I love you, Carrie. We _will _talk later, I promise."

Morgan stared at him, after he closed and pocketed his cell phone. Bitterly, he said, "What did she do to earn your love? What's different between _her _and _me_?"

He sighed. "Morgan, you're my descendent."

"Legally, she's your niece. Richie told me that you were married to her aunt."

"It's not like that ..." he trailed off, knowing this was an argument he didn't want to have. They must have talked about him the car, after he was shot. After a moment, he said, "It's different, with Carrie. Someday, Morgan ... someday, you'll find someone special ..."

"I found someone like that. And he's dead!" she reminded him. "What if he was supposed to be 'it' for me? And now I'll have no one ..." She suddenly looked away from him. "It's my fault that Jeffrey's dead. I don't _deserve _another chance with a guy, anyway."

"My first wife died at my hand." Kenshin said, shortly. He was growing impatient with her; he told himself she was young, and scared, and alone, but still, the sharp words continued to come from his mouth. He shocked himself by saying, "I killed her. Do not try to tell me _you _do not deserve another chance. If that is true, then every relationship I've had since Tomoe died by my hand has been undeserved and dishonorable."

"Oh, fuck you." She stalked off, going back inside.

He scowled after her. He told himself again that her reactions were understandable given her age, and her recent experiences. Still, he found himself annoyed. He said, to himself, "That is not the typical reaction people have when I tell them about Tomoe."

The words hung in the evening air. He huffed a sigh, and leaned on the balcony railing, and stared out at the dark night for a long time.

--

"And next time," Shannon told the young freshman, as he opened his dorm's door to let her out, "don't loan your iPod out to her ... hey, Brandon."

Brandon stood with his hand upraised, as if he had been about to knock. His left-hand cane was leaning against the wall; he hooked the cuff with his fingers, slid his hand back in to grasp the grip, and said nonchalantly, "Got a minute?"

"Hey Brandon," the girl that Shannon had been helping said.

"Melanie," Brandon gave her a grin. "Did you get your iPod back from your roommate?"

"Yeah, Shannon got it back."

"That's great."

"See you later." She wiggled her fingers at him in a little wave and then slipped past.

Brandon watched her go, then said, "She kicks our butt at Final Fantasy every night. Cute kid. I think she and Danny are going to hit it off. She's so shy, though, around him -- and Danny's falling all over himself to be a proper gentleman and not a tough kid from the ghetto. It's pretty funny to watch."

"I'll bet," Shannon said, with a vague pang of alarm that Melanie might be interested in Danny. Melanie was far too meek and mild for her own good, which was what had started a fiasco with her roommate taking her iPod and refusing to return it. Danny, on the other hand, was a tough guy from the wrong side of the tracks. Weirdly, he liked Danny -- but still, Melanie was just a sweet kid. "Come on in."

Brandon swung himself through the door, then stood, fidgeting, in the middle of Shannon's room.

"Want a beer?" Shannon offered. It was late enough in the afternoon to drink, he thought.

"Want to go with me? Friday? To a movie?" Brandon's words came out all in a jumble. He took a deep breath. "A date?"

Shannon snickered. "I think you need a beer; it might give you a bit of courage."

Brandon sighed, and hung his head, then looked up through his blond bangs. "Please?"

"Yeah, sure ..." He wanted to get Brandon alone and really talk to him, too. Then he shook his head. "Crap, no, I'm going to a party with Carrie."

"Oh." Brandon deflated somehow. "With Carrie? You asked Carrie to a party?"

"Just as friends!"

"Oh." Brandon blinked. Then he said, "Where's the party?"

He was as transparent as glass -- Shannon knew he was angling for an invitation as well. "Sorry, buddy. This party's being thrown by my, uh, less than liberal friends. I don't think you'd be comfortable there."

"Oh. The jocks."

"Yeah."

Brandon's face ... hardened, somehow. "So you haven't told them? About us?"

He hadn't. He said hesitantly, "Maybe they'll be okay with it."

"If you think they'd be okay with it, why not invite me?" Brandon stamped one cane against the ground. The rubber tip made a thumping noise on the floor.

Shannon hesitated, torn between the truth and a white lie. He finally decided on the truth, "Because I don't think you'd get along with them, Brandon."

"Because I'm gay and they'd hassle me." Brandon's glare turned heated.

"No, because you're an ass and you'd pick a fight the moment somebody, anybody, gave you an opening to do so."

"Oh, so I have to be a _good _little queer if I want to hang out with your friends. Politically correct, keep my mouth shut, pretend to just be one of the guys, is that it? I can't be myself?"

"No!"

"Oh, screw you. If you can't accept me as I am, just _screw _you. I'm out of here. Anyway, your friends already know who I am. They're all dicks. Take it from me, they're jockhole asswipes."

After he'd stomped off, both canes striking the ground with rather more force than necessary with each hop, Shannon muttered, "And that rather proves my point, I think, about Brandon and picking fights." He paused, then asked himself aloud, "What's a jockhole asswipe?"

Then he leaned against his door, and suddenly, unaccountably, awful. He'd hurt Brandon's feelings, and badly. Perhaps he should have opted for the white lie. Perhaps he should have found a more tactful way to handle this. Or maybe he should have invited Brandon to the party and just let things take their natural course.

Instead, Brandon was pissed at him. And the knowledge that Brandon was angry, and that he had caused that anger, was almost physically painful. Brandon's opinion of him _mattered_, he realized.

--

The smell of strong coffee woke Kenshin. He sat up to see Saito, in his uniform in the kitchen, pouring a mug of it.

He stood up. It was predawn, and the others were still asleep.

"You're right to worry about my colleagues, Himura-san," Saito said, without preamble, but very low. He sipped his coffee and leaned against his kitchen counter.

Kenshin folded his arms and nodded. "I expected as much. Still, the one thing I do not understand is why it is Garret who is trying to kill her. I would think it would be the family or associates of the shooter."

Saito lifted an eyebrow. "She's pregnant."

"Wouldn't that mean that Jeffrey's father would be _less _inclined to kill her? She is carrying his grandson."

Saito sipped his coffee.

Kenshin got the distinct impression that Saito knew something he wasn't saying. And that he expected Kenshin to figure it out for himself. It was annoying, and utterly familiar. A smirk appeared on the man's face, confirming Kenshin's guess.

"Motive," Saito said. Again, a small smile played around his mouth. "What motive would a grandfather have to kill his son's heirs?"

Kenshin suddenly scowled, eyes narrowing. He knew gold had suddenly touched his irises, as his anger rose. With hot suspicion, he demanded, "How much is that trust fund worth?"

Saito, unruffled by the sudden hostile flare of Kenshin's ki, since it wasn't aimed at him, simply shrugged. "I don't know, but I imagine you're resourceful enough to find out."

"I imagine Joe could determine that for me, with his contacts," Kenshin allowed.

Morgan was awake; he could sense her conscious _ki _in the bedroom. Kenshin suddenly spun around on one foot and headed for the guestroom.

She blinked and yanked her covers up to her chin when he pushed the door open, even though she was wearing an old shirt of Saito's in lieu of pajamas. They'd left most of their luggage in the hotel room.

"Morgan," he said, "Does Toby know you're pregnant?"

"Yeah. He guessed, just before I left. He promised not to tell my folks. He doesn't like them much." She blinked at him, "What's up?"

"What's going on?" George said, sleepily. He had sat up on the couch, behind Kenshin, and rubbed his eyes with the back of one bandaged hand.

"George, just out of curiosity, what would you do if Toby tried to get custody of Morgan's kid?" Kenshin asked.

"He wouldn't!" Morgan denied. Then she bit her lip. "I don't think."

"He's family. If children's services got involved and the child was taken into custody, he'd be first in line, particularly if her mother and father didn't want the child. Or, if she tried to give the baby up for adoption, he might try to adopt the baby." Kenshin folded his arms.

"I want to keep it," Morgan announced. Kenshin distinctly recalled that a few days before she'd been contemplating adoption.

"That man couldn't raise a puppy, much less a baby," George snorted. "If Morgan can't keep the child, I'd rather see her adopted by a stranger than that bastard."

"That's what I thought," Kenshin nodded at his grandson. "You'd get involved, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah." George said, firm confirmation. "Of course."

"But if you were living in a nursing home because you couldn't take care of yourself, it'd be easy for him to prove you incompetent." Kenshin leaned against the door jamb to the guest bedroom, glancing first at Morgan, then at George.

"Why would Toby want my baby?"

"Kiddo, do you know how much Jeffrey's trust fund is?" Kenshin asked, gently.

She shook her head. "His mother died when he was little. She was wealthy, I guess, and left everything to him. His little sister was always complaining about that, y'know. That he had a trust fund and she didn't. They're half-siblings. I guess it's a lot of money, but I really don't know how much."

Saito asked her, "Did he have a will?"

"Not that I ever heard."

"If he died without a will, then the baby you're carrying is his heir," Kenshin mused.

She hunched her shoulders. "I don't want that money."

Saito drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment, then said firmly. "If you and the baby die, then Garret and Jeffrey's half-sister would inherit. The girl is only what, ten?"

"Eight."

"So Garret would have control of his son's money. I wonder how much it is?" Saito tilted his head sideways.

"He said it was enough to send me to school. But Jeffrey wasn't really all that good with numbers. He said he was getting a lot of money, but I don't know how much was a lot." She frowned. "I was scared it wouldn't be enough. Seriously, I loved the man, but he literally couldn't make change for a candy bar, much less figure out an accounting statement. I asked a couple times to see, but he wouldn't let me ... said it would make his dad mad. To Jeffrey, 'a lot' of money could be anything from twenty bucks on up."

She hunched her shoulders. "I wanted to be an accountant. Or something with numbers. I'm good with numbers. Jeffrey struggled so much -- people thought he was lazy, but he just didn't get it. You could tell him, say, a phone number and he couldn't even write the number down. He'd get all the numbers jumbled up."

She tucked her knees to her chest. "Can ... can you guys give me a minute? I want to get dressed here."

Kenshin withdrew, shutting the door after him. He glanced at the others -- Richie and George had heard most of the conversation.

"Follow the money," Richie said.

"You really think her baby might have a fat inheritance coming?" George frowned.

"I'd bet on it," Kenshin pulled his cell phone out and dialed Joe's number. Joe, he figured, could get to the bottom of this.

--


	29. Chapter 29

"How much?" Kenshin said, in awed disbelief.

"That was twenty years ago, Ken," Joe said. Jeffrey Garret's inheritance had been the subject of extensive newspaper coverage, which Joe had found record of online. Kenshin tried to calculate the British pounds into yen in his head and failed; he had a rough idea of the exchange rate but the numbers were just too _big_. "It might be larger now; with good management, and the investment firm that has the trust is quite good, it might well have grown much larger."

"Certainly, a motive, that it is."

"Yeah. Eliminate the girl, you get rid of Jeffrey's unborn heir, and the money will go to Jeffrey's father and his sister."

"And he's likely justifying it with anger towards her. He is blaming her for his son's death to avoid feelings of guilt over the murder of his own granddaughter." Kenshin shook his head in disbelief. He had a very hard time understanding anyone who would value money over the life of a child. "This assumes, of course, he knew of the pregnancy before I told him. Morgan says the only person who knows about the baby besides us is her uncle, Toby."

"You think Toby told Garret?" Joe asked.

"I'm trying to figure out a reason why he would, and failing."

"Did Jeffrey know?"

"Aa, he did. Perhaps he told his father."

"Or Garret guessed." Joe said. "She's showing enough; he might not have seen her as often as her parents, so the growth in girth might have been more obvious to him."

"True," Kenshin said. "Here's an unpleasant thought -- what if Garret was involved in his son's death?"

"Morgan saw the shooter. It was the other boy she was seeing -- what was his name?"

"Reynold, I think." Kenshin said. "Son of a rival crime family. A love triangle makes sense, I suppose, except for the aspect of the _money_."

Joe sighed. The disgust in his voice echoed Kenshin's own sentiments. "So, she got pregnant with Jeffrey, from what we know. Then she broke up with him or some reason and started seeing Reynold. Then Reynold shoots and kills Jeffrey -- why, because she and Jeffrey were getting back together?"

"I was operating under the assumption that some form of jealousy was behind the shooting," Kenshin said. "Alternately, however, there is always the rule that one should follow the money ..."

Joe grunted. "Yeah. Reynold kills Jeffrey, Morgan's kid inherits enough money to fill a swimming pool, and Reynold marries her and gets access to the money that way. In his circles, I suspect it's well known that Jeffrey's a billion-dollar boy."

"Billion-yen, anyway, that it is." Kenshin had still been working away at the question of, _How many yen_ _is that_? He thought the funds were was enough to buy his little studio apartment in Tokyo a dozen times over, with change left for a penthouse or two. "That theory is convoluted, but possible." Kenshin frowned. "More possible, given the amount of money involved."

"... how do you think Morgan's going to handle that sort of wealth?"

"Badly, probably, at least at first." Kenshin rubbed the bridge of his nose. "She's all sorts of angry at the world, right now, and she won't listen to me if I try to give her any advice. Maybe I'll have George speak to her about it. Also, I can have my solicitor look into the possibility of having a trustee assigned to manage the funds. They belong to her child, and should be managed with the best interests of the child in mind -- which means a comfortable life for Morgan, but not obscene wealth. Nobody benefits by being obscenely wealthy."

"How's George doing?" Joe asked, a mild change in subject. Kenshin wondered if Joe agreed with the 'nobody benefits from obscene wealth' statement he'd made, but let it drop.

"I'm worried about him," Kenshin said, of his great-grandson. "I need to get him out of the line of fire. I don't want him to end up a pawn in this matter."

"Can you send him away?" Joe asked. "Maybe even out of the country?"

"The thought's occurred to me, but he doesn't have a current legal passport and travel would be very hard on him." Kenshin let some of the worry touch his voice. "I'll call my solicitor in a few hours when he's up, though, and see what he can do. He has connections and might be able to get the documents he'd need for travel through irregular channels ... I'd wanted to put him up in a hotel with attendants, but now I'm worried about all their safety. I don't know how they found us. I was so _careful_."

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't. You could send him here, if you want." Joe offered.

Joe was possibly in worse physical shape than George, and only a few years younger. Kenshin said tactfully, "I appreciate the offer, but I had Akane in mind, that I did. She knows George; Atsuko and I took her to England a few times and we always stayed with him."

"Mm. That might work."

"George doesn't want to leave London, however. He has grandchildren and great-grandchildren besides Morgan ..." Kenshin shook his head. "He doesn't want to move away because of them."

"Could any of them be in danger as well?" Joe asked.

"Likely." Kenshin ground out. "I'm going to talk to her parents later this afternoon. And tell them about the baby, at the same time."

"You finally convinced Morgan to go through with it, and tell them?"

"No." Kenshin ran a hand down his face, then closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers. He was so tired that they were burning. "But we're doing it anyway. They need to know, and I'm tired of coddling a sulky teenager, Joe. I'm losing patience with her by the minute."

Joe snorted. "I would have applied a hand to that one's back side a long time ago, where she mine."

"Unfortunately, she's _not _mine." Kenshin spoke with some frustration. "And she knows it."

--

Morgan was sulking. Kenshin, seated next to her in the back seat of a rental car, glanced over at her occasionally with mild concern.

They had left the stolen vehicle, plus enough cash to cover repairs to it, in a local pub's parking lot. Saito had indicated he would see that the vehicle was returned to its owner later. Now, in the back seat of a rented sedan, Kenshin was worried about many things, with an ambush at the forefront. Morgan's opinions were low on his priority list.

"You said I could chose when to tell them."

"No," Kenshin said, "I asked you if you wanted to. I never promised I _wouldn't_."

"I don't want to talk to them right now."

"Tough." That came from George, in the front seat next to Richie, who was driving. "Deal with it."

"Fuck you, Grandpa."

"Morgan-dono," Kenshin said, in a deceptively mild tone of voice, but one that made both George and Richie wince, "apologize to George. That was extremely rude."

"He was rude to me first!" There was strident defiance in her voice.

"It's okay, Pops ..." George said, uncomfortably.

"No. It's not. Morgan-dono, do you think cursing at people who are trying to help you is appropriate behavior?"

"I'm sorry. I'm just having a bad day."

"Aa." Kenshin glanced over at her. "That you are. That is no excuse, however, for rudeness."

"Were you polite when you _killed _people?" She glared at him. By her expression, she clearly thought she'd made a remark that should cut him to the bone.

George sucked in an alarmed breath. Richie, without hesitation, pulled the car over, swerving into the parking lot of a gas station. "Kid," he said, while Morgan sat with her arms folded, staring out the window. "Kenshin's too nice for his own good. George couldn't turn you over his knee if he wanted to. Me? I've about had it. Kenshin has given up his _life _for you --"

"Maa, maa, Richie-san ..." Kenshin, not wanting an argument, protested. Besides, he was not overly wounded -- he'd heard worse, over the years. He'd been everything from a homeless ronin, to a Japanese man living in Victorian England and rubbing elbows with the wealthiest of the wealthy. One developed a thick skin with that sort of background. "Generally speaking, Morgan-dono, I was polite, if one can equate 'honor' with 'politeness.'"

"Don't 'maa, maa' me, Ken," Richie said, ignoring Kenshin's calmly literal answer to her vicious question. "I'm sick of this brat. You've given up your _life_. You dropped out of college. You walked away from a fantastic girl, and she could very well decide to take up with someone else ..."

"I'm not worried about that," Kenshin waved away Richie's concerns. "Carrie will wait for me."

With angry, relentless fury, Richie snarled at him, "... you gave up a _lot _for Morgan. Everyone has. Both of you were tortured. I quit my _job_ to help her. And what does she do? Cuss us out, insult us, sulk and argue and pout. Morgan, I get that you've had a sucky life. But now that people are helping you, you need to lose the attitude."

"Are you done?" she said, still staring out the window.

Richie started to splutter angrily.

Kenshin cut him off with a well-timed, "Richie-san, thank you. You have said what I believe the three of us have been thinking. Perhaps, someone needed to."

"You guys have no idea what my life's been like!" She hiccuped, and Kenshin expected hysterics in a moment.

"Kiddo," George said, "you hardly have a monopoly on a bad life."

"You have no idea! I don't even deserve your help!" She finally turned to face them -- and swung a slap at Kenshin.

He let her hit him. He could have blocked her hand, but chose not to. Her curled fingers smacked his cheek, nails leaving gouges. It wasn't much of a blow, all things considered, but after delivering it she recoiled until she was flattened against the car door. She stared at him with wide eyes, obviously shocked by her own actions.

Utterly calm, Kenshin said, "The next time, I will strike you back."

"I'm pregnant!"

"That you are." He wiped his hand across his cheek. Tiny smears of blood marked his palm, though the small cuts from her nails were already healing. He licked the blood off.

She made a gagging noise, covered her mouth, and looked away.

Kenshin almost smiled, and managed to keep a scowl on his face only with disciplined effort. That trick, licking his own blood from a small wound, had unnerved quite a few grown, male, opponents. It also, obviously, worked on defiant teenage girls. "Richie, I believe we can proceed, now."

Morgan said softly, "I don't deserve your help. I don't deserve this baby. I don't deserve _any _of this."

"Then," Kenshin said, in a kindly, gentle tone of voice, "you'll simply have to make yourself worthy."

He expected her to soften, to accept his words. Instead, he felt a strengthening of resolve from her; he sensed stubborn defiance and real anger. "I can't! You don't understand, I can't!"

For the moment, he decided to let it go. There was nothing he could say to heal Morgan's shattered heart until she decided to let him help her. So, he simply folded his arms, leaned back against the seat, and briefly closed his eyes. He found he was achingly tired.

--

Morgan's parents had agreed to meet them at a hotel room that Saito had arranged for through his contacts in the department. It was, supposedly, untraceable to them. Even so, Kenshin surveyed the parking lot and surrounding buildings with paranoid interest.

Beside him, Richie had a hand on his sword -- oh, you couldn't _see _that weapon, and if you tried to look you would find your eyes sliding away from his hand, but Richie's caution was plain from his the set of his shoulders and the alert way he watched passing cars and scanned windows and doorways for men with rifles. George, behind both of them, asked, "Do you expect trouble?"

"Perhaps." Kenshin waved them both past him, with Morgan protected a bit by being between them. They'd already discussed what they would do if they were ambushed -- Richie would shield Morgan with his body; Kenshin would attempt to deflect the bullets with his sword and take out the bad guys.

The room was 2E -- second floor, and close enough both stairwells for a quick escape. Kenshin was willing to bet that Saito had taken _flight _into account when reserving the room.

Someone was already there; Kenshin could sense an agitated ki on the other side of the door. George knocked, and the door opened, and Kenshin found himself regarding Sebastian Trevor, who he had not seen since the man was a toddler. George's grandson had been knee high and barely learning to walk thirty-five years ago. Now, he was a thin man with a narrow, long face and a prominent adam's apple.

There was nothing of Kenji in his face. Little of George; the only resemblance that Kenshin saw to his great-grandson was a slight similarity around the mouth. However, where George was prone to devilish grins and quick laughter, Sebastian was stern, humorless. Perhaps if Sebastian were to smile, they might look more alike -- they were almost the same height, which was about a foot taller than Kenshin, and they had the same wiry build.

He'd been an unhappy baby, too, Kenshin recalled. He had also been quick to anger as an infant, and easily irritated, with little sense of humor. Kenshin wondered if those trait had carried on into adulthood. By Morgan's behavior, he suspected she'd learned to fear how she would be treated by the adults in her life -- had an angry little boy become a hot-tempered man? She had been treated unfairly, he guessed; she lacked trust, and had learned to be manipulative and defensive, in turns, out of necessity.

"Morgan," Sebastian said -- at least it was a friendly-sounding greeting. He hugged his daughter. She accepted the embrace stiffly. "Your mom had to work."

"Figures." She brushed past him as soon as he let go of her. His expression twisted into one of disgust, behind her back. Kenshin saw, and so did George -- George caught Kenshin's gaze and rolled his eyes.

Kenshin had a sinking feeling that this had not been one of his brighter ideas, but he had been growing increasingly uncomfortable with protecting Morgan without knowing her parents. He thought they had a right to know as much of the story as they could be safely told. Had it been his daughter, he would have wanted to know.

"Deborah's not here?" George said, sounding as disgusted as Kenshin felt. "I agree with the girl: that figures."

Sebastian shook his head. "She's lost so much work because of that one," he pointed at Morgan, "she can't miss any more."

"I was sick." Morgan said, in defense of herself. "Mostly."

"Sick. Yeah. And truant from school, so she had to go look for you. And the shoplifting charges, she had to go to court. And all the times you got in trouble in school, and she had to come get you!" He threw his arms in the air, as if to indicate that Morgan's mountain of transgressions was higher than his head.

Morgan said nothing, she simply sat down hard on the bed, folded her arms, and glared at everyone. Kenshin winced; Morgan hadn't seen her parents in at least a month, and it had to hurt her that the first thing her father did was yell at her, and belittle her.

Kenshin realized why she had a habit of either lashing out angrily or clamming up and shutting down. It was learned behavior. Her father _knew _she'd nearly been killed twice, and he was already yelling at her? She had learned to keep her own council, because she could not honestly discuss her problems with her parents without criticism and belittlement.

"Sebastian," George said, after clearing his throat, "These are my friends Kenny Myojin, and Richie Ryan."

Sebastian turned his attention to George. "You're in a lot of trouble, you know. Toby's furious that you ran away from the nursing home."

"Trevor-san," Kenshin said, "There are some things you need to know ..."

"That's _Mr. _Trevor." Sebastian snapped. He glared at Kenshin, "And if you two boys will excuse me, I need to speak to my grandfather and my daughter. Alone."

George gave Kenshin a look that held frank panic. 'Boys' was apparently Kenshin and Richie -- well, Kenshin figured they both looked like teenagers. Kenshin hesitated. He didn't want to provoke a scene with Sebastian; on the other hand, he was concerned about what Sebastian might say to the two of them. It was quite a conflict.

"I want Kenshin to stay here," George said, "Sebastian, I trust him with my life. Richie, too. Both of them."

"He's just a kid. I thought you said to me earlier that you'd known him for decades." Sebastian was frowning, intensely, at George.

George opened his mouth as if to argue, closed it, then said, "You must have misunderstood. I've known Kenshin since he was much younger. He's an absolutely trustworthy young man. Also, he's much older than he looks."

At that moment, someone knocked on the door. Richie jumped; Kenshin, slightly less startled, simply put a hand on the hilt of his sword. The _ki _felt familiar -- he made an educated guess and said, "You asked Toby to come?"

"Toby's been a tremendous help with Morgan."

"I hate him." Morgan scowled.

"Morgan-dono, I pray you never learn the true meaning of the word _hate_." Kenshin walked to the door and opened it, while Sebastian and Morgan both glared daggers at his back. He caught a glimpse of their expressions out of the corner of his eye; they matched, almost exactly.

Toby, as he had expected, was standing there. Kenshin inclined his head in greeting. "Hello, Toby-kun. I assume that Sebastian invited you."

The _kun _was a deliberate choice of honorifics; Toby, unlike Sebastian, knew exactly who and what Kenshin was. George had sent him to Tokyo many years ago, to get him away from a bad crowd. The _kun _was a firm reminder to Toby, who spoke passable if imperfect Japanese, that Kenshin was his elder in both age and experience.

Toby dipped his head and shoulders in a bow. Kenshin wasn't sure if it was genuinely respectful, slyly mocking, or if it was simply the instinctive reaction some Westerners had to a bow -- some people simply couldn't resist the impulse to bow back.

In heavily accented Japanese, Toby said, "Honorable grandfather."

Okay, he was being subtly sarcastic. And English had _nothing _on Japanese for the ability to insult.

George sucked a sharp breath in; obviously, he'd understood that. Well, at one time, George had been significantly more fluent in Japanese than any of Kenshin's family save Kenji. He might be unwilling -- or, truly, emotionally unable -- to speak it. However, comprehension was involuntary.

Kenshin said shortly, "You've a lot of explaining to do, Toby-kun."

"You two know each other?" Sebastian said, confused.

"Yeah, you could say that. Kenny Myojin isn't who, or what, you think he is, 'Baz."

"You promised," Kenshin said, suddenly alarmed. "Toby-san, you swore me an oath that you would _never _reveal what I am to anyone -- not even your _brother_."

"Fuck," Richie said.

Toby ignored that; Kenshin gave Richie a warning, and quelling, look. There was no need for Richie's cover to be blown along with his own.

"Uncle Toby, don't betray him!" Morgan stood up. "Uncle, no!"

Toby thrust something at Sebastian. Kenshin recognized a photograph. Sometimes, he wished cameras had never been invented. He clapped a hand over his face and shook his head in appalled dismay.

Sebastian stared at the photograph -- it was, as Kenshin had seen, a picture of a very young Sebastian in Kenshin's arms. A much younger George had Toby, who was about four, perched on his shoulders. And Shinya, tiny and withered and ancient, a little bitty gnome of an old man shrunk to no taller than Kenshin, was between them, with Saito's infant father in his arms.

_Summer vacation at the seashore_, Kenshin recalled. There was an ocean view behind them. George had arranged for Kenshin to meet the children; their parents had not known about him. For their own protection, as well as his, Kenshin had become selective about who he told his secret to as the family size had grown. George's children had never known about him; only Toby, among his several grandchildren, was in on the secret.

Shinya had died a few months later, he recalled. As he stared at the picture he could see the signs of the cancer that had taken his life; Shinya was too thin, too frail, even for his advanced years. It hurt, to look at that photo. The last words he had uttered, according to George who had been there at the bedside as time and disease had claimed him, were, "Byron ... Byron ... Byron."

_Shannon_, he thought, _I cannot wait to return to Seacouver to get to know you as well as I knew Yahiko's son._

"That's me," Toby said, pointing at the toddler in the picture.

His eyes lifted to stare at Kenshin. "A relative of yours?"

"Ie." Kenshin said, then corrected himself. "No."

"You could be twins."

"Or the same man."

"Impossible."

"Are you going to lie, Kenshin?" Toby asked, curiously.

"Ie." Kenshin spun back to face Toby. "You are a dishonorable man, Toby. You swore me an oath that you would never tell."

"That was a long time ago."

"I have kept one oath one hundred and fifty years," Kenshin drew himself up to his full height, what there was of it, then turned back to face Sebastian.

"A hundred and fifty ...?" Sebastian was staring at him.

"My name -- my real name -- is Himura Kenshin." Kenshin said, quietly. There was nothing he could do, but tell the truth. Toby obviously was going to force his hand. "You have seen my face before, in old family photos."

"The samurai who adopted Kenji Trevor." Sebastian said, blinking, then, flatly, he said, "Absolutely impossible."

"He's Immortal." Morgan explained to her father. "He can't die."

"You believe this crap?" He snarled.

"I've seen." Morgan flinched at the disgust in her father's voice.

"You had a scar on your face. And red hair. I've seen old family letters talking about him. Himura Kenshin had really red hair." Sebastian still sounded wildly skeptical.

"I still have a scar on my face; I am wearing concealer. And," he ran a hand through his bangs, pushing them back to reveal his scalp. "My roots should be showing by now, it's been a week since I dyed it."

"Besides," George said, "I've known Ken-nii since I was a toddler. He's my great-grandfather, 'Baz. That's why I sent Morgan to him -- he's family, and I trust him with my life."

"This is insane."

Kenshin sighed, dug in his pocket, found his pocket knife, and walked to the bathroom sink. Sebastian stared after him. Kenshin summoned him with an impatient wave of one hand, then with his fingers fastidiously held over the sink, he slashed the palm of his hand. He held his hand up, blood trickling down his wrist.

Sebastian turned green.

"You're insane."

"Actually, this is kindof cool, daddy." Morgan had hopped up to watch as the wound knitted back together.

Sebastian stared too. "What kind of ..." _monster_, Kenshin thought he wanted to say, but he bit his words off and studied Kenshin's face with fascination. "Are you really my -- what, five times great grandfather? Four? Something like that?"

Kenshin washed his hand off, and then rinsed the blood down the drain. He wiped his healed fingers on his jeans and said, "I could shoot myself, if you'd like, but that is very messy and would likely upset the hotel cleaning staff."

"No, no ..." Sebastian sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

"Now," Kenshin said, turning to Toby. "That's taken care of. Toby-kun, what games are you playing? Did you think I would deny who I was, and perhaps flee if you forced me to reveal myself? I am not afraid of facing the truth about my identity; there is nothing dishonorable in what I am. What the rest of the world chooses to make of me is _their _problem, not mine."

"You're a scary man," Richie murmured, almost under his breath. Kenshin ignored that.

"No games," Toby said, avoiding Kenshin's level, pissed, gaze. "I just thought he should know."

"That is _my _decision to make," Kenshin said, in Japanese. "I truly resent having that choice taken from me."

Toby replied in English, "I ..."

Kenshin switched to English as well, "You wanted me out of the picture, didn't you? You're after the trust fund for yourself. And you know how I feel about the children of the family. I will not stand idly by and let them come to harm. Unlike you, I keep my promises."

"Trust fund?" Sebastian said.

"No!" Toby denied.

"Trust fund?" Sebastian repeated.

"For the baby I'm having." Morgan said, to her father. "Apparently, it's rich."

"I know about the baby. Toby told me." Sebastian scowled at his daughter. Then he turned to Toby, a lightning quick move. "You wanted to adopt that baby, you and your wife. You knew about the trust fund?"

"It's not much." Toby said, dismissively.

"If mid eight figures in pounds isn't much." Kenshin said, with feigned innocence to his voice. "Conservatively, of course. We don't know how much interest has accrued. It might be more. But I guess that's not much money, that it isn't."

"_How _much?" Sebastian gasped. "Toby, you knew about this?"

"It's why people have been trying to kill Morgan. Not Reynold's people, but Garret's." Richie nodded at her. "Kill Morgan, and her daughter, and Garret is next in line for the inheritance."

Morgan defensively crossed her arms over her stomach. "I don't want the money. I just want them to stop chasing me. They can _keep _the money ..."

"Honey, that's a _lot _of money." Sebastian twisted back to face her.

"... can't spend it if we're dead." She glared up at him. "Kenshin, do you think Garret would get off our case if I promise never to try to claim that money?"

"I doubt it." Kenshin said, honestly. "Because that doubt would always be there, in his mind, that you could come along later and go after it."

"We need to go to the media with this," Sebastian said, decisively. "He can't kill her if everyone knows he'd be the suspect."

"The man tried to a hit on a public street in front of a movie theater. I suspect he's not worried much about bad publicity." Richie snorted. "He's not sane."

"Too bad the two of you couldn't just _stop _him," George said.

Kenshin gave his grandson an appalled look, and George held his hands up defensively. "I know, I know. Just, some people _need _killing. He's trying to kill his unborn granddaughter and a teenage girl over _money_."

"I'd do it," Richie said, with a shrug. It sounded almost like a genuine offer. "I'm sick of being shot at and I'm losing patience with hiding."

"Murder is no more a solution for us than it is for Garret," Kenshin said, quietly.

"Sometimes, I agree with Mac about you," Richie scowled at him.

Kenshin had no difficulty understanding that statement, thought it was probably cryptic to the rest of the room. Richie was referring to Mac's opinion that he was a fool. Kenshin smiled sweetly and said, "Sometimes, _I _agree with MacLeod."

Richie snorted.

"Still, perhaps there's ..."

He had half a second of warning as an aggressive _ki _washed across his awareness. Kenshin whirled, hand dropping to his sword. However, the hotel room was crowded and Kenshin didn't have a clear space to draw his sword when the door slammed inward and a gun cracked. George was in the way of the arc of his strike.

Kenshin launched himself forward at blinding speed before the man had time to fire again, while, simultaneously behind him, Richie tackled Morgan and shoved her backwards between the beds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Richie jerk and his dive turned into an uncontrolled fall, but he'd successfully gotten Morgan out of the line of fire.

Kenshin trusted Richie to keep Morgan safe. His job was to stop the bad guys.

Most people scattered away when a door was kicked in; Kenshin immediately went on the attack. He slammed the hilt of his sword into the gut of a tall, dark-haired man holding a gun, then kicked the man's hand. The weapon slid across the floor and thumped against the baseboards by the window

Kenshin kept moving. Now that he had a clear space to pull his sword, he slammed it into the man's jaw in one smooth, lightning fast blow. The man went down with an audible crunch of shattering teeth and bone.

There were two more men coming through the doorway. Kenshin, moving faster than the eye could follow, smashed one man's hand and the other's shoulder with the sakabatou's blunt edge. A fourth man tried to enter the room. Kenshin was in a bad position for a sword strike, but he turned the momentum of his last blow into airborne motion, bounced off the wall close to the ceiling, and came down on top of the attacker with all his weight, booted feet going for vulnerable points. He heard bones break and the man howled.

Kenshin landed neatly, crouched, sword level with the ground. He smelled blood, and lots of it. He turned to see who was hurt.

George had reclaimed the gun from under the couch and held it somewhat awkwardly in his battered hands, pointed at the least-injured of the four hit men -- the one whose hand Kenshin had smashed. His one unbroken finger, a pinky, was on the trigger. "Don't move," he growled. "Ken-nii may be unwilling to kill, but I'm not nearly so pure of heart."

"Give me that," Toby held his hand out.

Kenshin knew someone was hurt. There was blood on the wall. An arc of it. He counted heads -- Morgan, George, Toby, 'Baz. Where was Richie?

"I've got it!" George said, talking about the gun. He sounded _angry_ -- angrier than Kenshin had ever heard him.

Richie was definitely hurt, since he hadn't popped back up from between the beds. Well, that was not a disaster, just an inconvenience.

Kenshin reached out and calmly took the gun from George's hand. George stared at him, obviously shocked that Kenshin had so easily grabbed it. Kenshin put the safety on and stuffed it in his pocket. In these close quarters he'd trust his sword over a gun for protection. He demanded of the attackers at large -- who were groaning, sobbing, and one puking, "Are you Garret's men?"

Silence, from all four of them.

Kenshin suspected they were not pros; he would not have had as much warning had it been a professional assassin after him. They were just thugs, likely bribed with a large amount of money to make the hit. Kenshin calmly reversed his sword and, with lightning fast speed, hooked it under the belt of the least-injured man. The razor sharp steel sliced effortlessly through the leather. The man gasped and cupped his uninjured hand around his nuts; Kenshin's unspoken threat was blatantly obvious.

Kenshin lifted an eyebrow. "This one is waiting for an answer."

"Y-yeah. Garret sent us."

"Excellent. How did you find us?"

"He - he said kill the girl. That she'd be here. That's it!"

Someone was coming -- Kenshin sensed cold, ruthless, efficient anger. Less than three minutes had passed since the door had been kicked in.

He sheathed his sword, and opened the door without comment. This would, he hoped, be reinforcements -- Richie hadn't gotten up yet; Kenshin couldn't sense his buzz, either. He was the only fighter in the room, and that made him glad for the arriving help.

Richie was dead, but he'd deal with that in a minute.

Kenshin was operating with hitokiri instincts at the moment -- prioritizing problems, and four wounded enemies was at the top of the list of potential trouble. Two against four was _much _better odds. Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu was actually designed to be used by one man against many attackers, but still, he was afraid the moment he crouched to frisk one man, another would pull a concealed weapon.

Saito stood on the other side, one hand raised up to knock. He regarded the scene inside, then inclined his head in a brief bow of acknowledgement. In overly formal Japanese, he said, "I apologize, my honorable elder, it appears I am a bit late to the party."

Kenshin muttered something under his breath.

"What's that about a 'clown'?" Saito said, sounding puzzled.

Apparently, his hearing was better than average. Kenshin blinked innocently at him. "Nothing, Saito-san."

"I believe I heard you say, 'He was never a _clown _before'?"

"Ken-nii's just senile in his old age," George said, with a grin. "Ignore his mumblings."

"Saito-san, how did you know there would problems here?"

"I was in the parking lot. I got my boss to authorize a stakeout. I thought someone in the department might be on the take. Looks like I was right." He sounded supremely disgusted. "Is everyone okay?"

Toby suddenly gagged and threw up on the bed spread. He'd looked at the body on the floor between the beds.

Kenshin glanced over. Sebastian had his hand over his mouth and was staring down at the corpse. "I believe Richie's dead."

"Oh." Saito said, then added, in Japanese, "By your extreme lack of emotional upset, and given how much you clearly care for him, I'm guessing he's like you?"

"Perceptive as ever, I see." Kenshin sighed. Keeping secrets from Saito was going to be impossible. He resolved to not even try; it would save him a good bit of stress. "You might want to call an ambulance for the hit squad, here. I broke some bones and the one guy's got a busted jaw. He might need help to keep from choking if there's a lot of swelling."

"Do you want to keep Richie's identity as Immortal secret?" Saito asked.

"From Toby and 'Baz, yeah. George knows. I honestly don't know if he told Morgan or not; life's been so chaotic I never thought to ask." Kenshin ran a hand over his hair. His ponytail had come loose during the fight; it was irritating him. He was on edge, leftover adrenalin making him jittery and anxious. He recognized the feeling; deadly calm was being replaced with biologically-induced anxiety. The various groans and sobs from the wounded men were setting his teeth on edge; they reminded him of fights long past. And the smells -- blood, shit, vomit -- were even worse. Odors triggered memories.

"Are you okay?" Saito asked.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." He was too seasoned to lose it right now, though in a few weeks, when this was all over, getting very drunk was sounding more and more like an option to consider. Maybe with Carrie to keep him company. Yes, he could wait until he was back with Carrie to indulge in one night of complete melt down.

Carrie had already seen past his facade; she knew he wasn't nearly as strong as he pretended to be. It felt good to contemplate just letting _go _in her arms.

Morgan said quietly, "Kenshin, Richie's hurt bad."

Her father realized she was seeing the 'dead' body and grabbed her by the shoulders and steered her away. Then he pressed her face into his shoulder. "Don't look, don't look, sweetie ... you shouldn't see things like that ... I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry ..."

"Let me go, Dad ..." She tried to push free. He wouldn't let her go. Kenshin glanced over, established she wasn't actually in any danger, though by the way Toby was holding her, with her stomach squished between them, she couldn't exactly be comfortable.

Saito pulled some zip ties out of his pocket and thrust them at Kenshin. "You get the two by the door, I'll secure the others."

There wasn't much fight left in the hit men, but Kenshin agreed with Saito's suggestion. The one he'd effectively trampled had a broken collarbone and a head injury; Kenshin tied his feet and attached his uninjured arm to his belt. The man mumbled something semi-incoherent. He was the worst injured of the lot, and Kenshin knew they'd need to keep an eye on him until the paramedics showed up.

Then he trussed the man with the broken jaw more securely; though he'd worried about swelling, that didn't seem to be a concern yet, and the man was theoretically mobile. However, the man's resistance to Kenshin frisking him and tying him up was only token: he tried to swing a punch at Kenshin. Kenshin dodged it, caught the man's wrist, and efficiently dislocated his shoulder. And _then _tied him up. He completely ignored the man's screams and shuddering cries, and only stepped aside when the man started vomiting from pain.

Saito said mildly, and without any sort of reprimand, "Remind me never to piss you off."

Kenshin glanced at him, and thought, _You used to do so deliberately, _but, of course, he couldn't say it.

Saito, in a clear double take, gave him a keener look. Kenshin wondered what he'd seen -- was his frustrated rage showing as amber tints in his eyes? Once that the attack was over, the shock had been replaced by agitation and now that was resolving into cold, hard _anger_. He was sick of running, sick of near misses, sick of people he cared about getting hurt, and _furious _at Garret.

"He broke my arm ..." the man said, thickly. "Cop, he broke my arm!"

"You tried to kill a pregnant girl," Saito said. "Shut the fuck up. Be glad he didn't take your head off with that sword."

"Probably a good thing," Saito said, switching back to Japanese, "that you're sworn not to kill. I'd sure hate to be the one tasked with hunting you down and bringing you to justice."

Kenshin said, quietly, "This is not something that needs my hand to resolve, now, as much as I would like to _end _Garret with a bit of swift justice ... I expect you will be able to get these men to talk, and then you can arrest him. He's made a tactical error here. Once you have a confession you can seize his assets, and he will have no money left to hire hit men. What power he has will be diminished when he is behind bars. His associates in organized crime will eventually take over his organization -- and they will have no motive to kill the child as they do not stand in line to inherit.

Saito was silent. Kenshin knew he was right. There was a sudden sense of relief, to see a light at the end of this tunnel. Perhaps he would be able to go home soon.

Kenshin added, "Indeed, I expect that once word comes out in the press that Garret has been trying to kill his unborn grandchild, many of his associates will be repulsed, and betray him. There is a feeling among the yakuza that seems to be universal, regardless of culture -- and that is, family is important. A man who will kill his own grandchild? Is a man who cannot be trusted."

Saito nodded. "You want this to go to the press?"

Kenshin shrugged. "We have done nothing wrong. And could you stop the word from making the blogs?"

"Probably not. The attack at the hotel is already in the news, though there's no connection yet with Garret or Morgan."

"I bled out there." Kenshin stood up. His knees felt a little shaky; emotional aftermath of the fight, again. Time to check on Richie. "Will you get 'Baz and Toby out of here?"

"Yeah, sure." Saito said, in English, "I need to talk to you two men about what happened here ..."

Sebastian didn't let go of his daughter, but Saito managed to get the three of them out the door and into the hotel hallway.

Kenshin walked over to look between the bed, expecting to see nothing worse than a gunshot.

__

Oh, Richie.

The shot had been to Richie's throat. Death had probably been instant; it had been a large caliber bullet, and the close range impact had very nearly taken Richie's head off. Blood was everywhere, and Kenshin could see bits of cartilage and bone visible in that craterous wound. He crouched next to Richie's body and rolled him over; the force of the impact had very obviously taken a chunk of his skull, at the base of his neck, with it. His spine was shattered.

Immortals could heal from almost anything -- but the only thing holding Richie's head to his neck was a few shreds of skin and muscle. Kenshin half expected a Quickening to start, just looking at that injury. Even as he watched, energy -- miniature lightning bolts -- played across that terrible wound. He'd seen such displays as terribly wounded Immortals healed, but also, just before a full-scale Quickening erupted, little bits of energy would crackle and snap from a corpse. He didn't know what he was seeing.

Could he recover from this?

Kenshin new this was right on the edge of what would kill an Immortal. He was terrified even to move him more than he had. Who knew where the tipping point was that would lead to a Quickening?

__

Oh, Gods, I was so careful -- overconfident that your Immortality would protect you from anything short of another Immortal.

"I'm sorry ..." he sat down hard on the edge of the bed, knees suddenly weak. "Sano, I'm sorry, I've done it again ..."


	30. Chapter 30

Richie woke to the awareness of darkness, and cold. He was shivering, and when he raised a hand, he touched rubberized fabric. It was pitch black. Nearby, he could hear a saw whirring, and people talking.

__

Where am I?

Instinctively, he remained still. The sounds were muffled. He tried to make sense of them, and gradually, he put the clues together. He'd been killed. Now he was in a plastic enclosure of some sort.

A _sealed _plastic enclosure.

He fumbled a zipper open, just a crack. No sense in dying twice.

There was still no light even after he got the body bag open. He stayed still. He guessed he was in a morgue somewhere. It was cold; if his friends didn't bail him out soon, he was going to die that second time from hypothermia before asphyxiation claimed him. _Refrigerated drawer_, he realized.

That meant he could move about in relative safety. He had blood all down the front of his shirt, and when he touched his throat, he found new skin and dimpled flesh that wasn't done healing. His body felt _weird _-- numb and tingly in spots, and when he moved his feet, they jerked. He recognized the after effects of a severed spine.

It would heal, but he hoped he wasn't going to need to run any time soon.

__

Probably a good thing I'm not claustrophobic.

After a bit, it grew quiet. He hoped this meant it was the end of the day as he was actively shivering now. If anyone opened the drawer he'd never be able to convincingly play dead. Finally, after an almost unbearable amount of time -- hours, he guessed -- he felt first the buzz of another Immortant and the drawer slid open.

"Thank the Gods," Kenshin's light, almost feminine voice said, as small, heavily callused hands tugged the fabric back from his face. "You're okay."

He blinked at the light, too bright after hours in pitch blackness. Then Richie scrambled off the table, landing awkwardly. His legs didn't seem to want to cooperate. He saw Morgan, standing behind Kenshin -- she stared at him with enormous eyes, hugging herself, and not saying a word. Richie asked, "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

"You almost lost your head." Kenshin stared up at him. The man's makeup was gone; sometime in the last several hours he'd had a shower and not bothered to hide his scars again. His pale roots were showing, as well -- a quarter inch of light red hair. "I was scared you would not heal."

"I'm okay." Richie was slightly unnerved by the way Kenshin was looking at him. Kenshin seemed like he wanted to hug him. Richie shifted uncomfortably; he wasn't phobic about being touched by other men, but Kenshin seemed to be more _intense _than usual.

Then the little Immortal blinked and the moment was gone. "Let's get out of here. George is our lookout and I don't like to leave him alone."

Richie had initially been surprised by how quietly competent the old man was. Now, he was just glad someone sharp was watching their back.

"Do the cops have my ID?"

"No." Kenshin fished in the pocket of his duster and found a wallet; he tossed it to Richie. "Saito filched it. You're a dead John Doe to the cops."

Richie nearly dropped it, his hands were fumbly, and he cursed. "Damnit! I don't think I'm completely healed yet."

"Might take awhile." Kenshin pushed the door open and held it for him. "You came pretty close to losing your head. There were even sparks."

"Let's _not _tell Mac about this."

Kenshin's eyes twinkled, suddenly. "I have no desire to face the wrath of your _sensei_, Richie. Discretion seems wise, that it does."

Riche shook his head. "You called me _Richie_. Without the -san."

"So I did." Kenshin hesitated, but didn't say anything else. Richie wondered what the little man was thinking.

--

Kenshin kept _looking _at him from his position in the back seat.

Richie drove the rental car, and tried not to let Kenshin see how wigged he was. Kenshin wasn't helping, however; the man kept glancing Richie's way and Richie could see it in the rear-view mirror. He would open his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and then close it again.

Morgan said softly, "I wish I was Immortal."

"No, kid, you don't," George said, before either Immortal could speak up. "Imagine living your entire life the way you are now -- afraid for your life. That's the reality that Kenshin and Richie have to endure."

Richie snorted. "This is unusually bad, George. It's not _always _like this."

"Well, for you, maybe. Kenshin, on the other hand ..." George was teasing, a bit. But then he sobered. He said quietly, "I'm glad to be mortal, Morgan. I wouldn't want to be like Kenshin -- not for anything."

"But you're going to die!"

"And you," George said, giving her a dark look, "lack tact, child."

"I mean ... yeah." She sighed. "That was rude. Sorry, Grandpa."

Kenshin reached a hand out, and rested it on Morgan's shoulder. Suddenly, her face crumpled and she dissolved into hysterical and instant tears. Kenshin unbuckled his seatbelt and hitched himself across so that he could put his arms around her shoulders.

Richie couldn't hear what Kenshin was saying to her. He supposed it didn't matter. It was well past time that Morgan come unglued. He felt like hysterical tears himself.

"So what's up with Garrett, anyway?"

"Saito was going to arrest him right before he dropped us off to rent the car." Kenshin sounded smug. "His henchmen talked."

"Oh. Good. So it's over?"

"Yeah, we think so." George sounded relieved. "Garrett was after his grandbaby's trust fund, it was as simple as that. And we think Reynold's motive for killing Jeffrey was the trust fund too. He wanted Morgan to marry him and wanted Jeffrey out of the way."

"It's all my fault," she said, from her position burrowed into Kenshin's arms. She sniffled. Richie wondered if she was getting snot as well as tears on Kenshin's shirt -- if so, Kenshin was too gracious to say anything about it. "Jeffrey got killed because of me."

"No, honey," George said. "Jeffrey was killed because there's bad people in the world. That's all."

"Now that it's over," Kenshin said, stroking her hair, "What do you want to do?"

"I _don't _want to go home to my parents!"

He didn't blame her, having seen how 'Baz interacted with her.

"She could live with me." George spoke up, unexpectedly. "Hell, I could use the help. And I can help her with the baby."

"You?" She sounded incredulous.

"I _am _a great-great grandfather, with the birth of your kid." He sniffed. "I've known a few babies in my time."

"Oh. Um."

Richie thought it wasn't that bad of an idea, actually. And Kenshin clearly agreed, because he said, "What do you think, Morgan?"

She was silent for a long, long moment. Then she said in a small voice, "Will you stay with us too?"

Kenshin gently smoothed her hair back. "I want to go back to Kaoru, Morgan. You'll be okay, I promise."

"Just until the baby comes ... I'm so _scared_."

She really was terrified. It was obvious by her tone of voice. Though why she suddenly wanted Kenshin, Richie wasn't sure -- except that perhaps she'd seen Kenshin in action and knew him to be a good protector too.

"Pleaaase..."

Kenshin put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back upright. She hugged herself and sat, sobbing, and staring at nobody.

"Kiddo," Kenshin said, quietly, "I love Carrie. I promised her I'd return as soon as I could. If I go back now, I might still be able to finish my semester of college. I haven't dropped out yet and I've only been away a few days."

"It's not fair. I'll _never _find anyone who loves me like you love that woman!" The outburst was torn from her.

Kenshin said nothing. Richie thought that she might well be correct, but only because very few people shared a love like what he'd witnessed between the two of them.

--

The old house had aged gracefully -- generations of Trevors had lived here, and loved it, and kept it in good repair. It was as Kenshin remembered it; a graceful manor house, three stories, with ivy and a steeply pitched roof.

Kenshin fished in his pocket, found his keychain, and unlocked the front door. The lock had been the same since the 1960's -- and though he rarely came here to visit, he always had that key on his chain.

He held the door open for George, who shuffled through and seemed to relax. For Kenshin, the house was memories. For George, it was _home. _Kenshin waited for Richie and Morgan and then locked the door after them.

"Wow." Richie was impressed. "Nice digs."

Kenshin nodded at him. It was a very impressive old home. George also smiled and walked across the foyer, and fiddled with a thermostat on the wall by the door that led into the parlor. Below their feet, in the basement, the boiler rumbled to life.

"Still haven't replaced that old thing?" Kenshin said, as pipes rattled throughout the house. "Radiant heating under the floor boards would be a lot more efficient. That old oil boiler has to cost a fortune to run. I think it's as old as you are."

"Still works," George grunted.

Actually, the furnace _was _almostas old as George was. Kenshin shook his head, and followed George into the kitchen. He distinctly remembered it being installed when George was still very small, because the older coal burning boiler had sprung a water leak and they'd elected to replace it rather than repair it one more time. In the weeks it had taken to install the new furnace, in the winter, the house had been heated only by fireplaces.

This hadn't been a problem for the adults, who simply bundled up, but George had crawled into Kenshin's bed every night to keep warm -- George, at about three at the time, had observed that in a choice between sharing a bed with his parents and other young siblings or his less-than-five-foot grandfather, there was more room in the bed with his grandpa!

The kitchen was vast and empty. He remembered when it had been full of servants, plus the odd recalcitrant child -- the cooks and scullery maids had been vastly amused by his habit of making his own children do chores when they misbehaved. A favorite of his was dishes, and when the household had numbered in the dozens of people, there had been lots of dishes.

He distinctly remembered making Yukio wash the dinner dishes for a month, without the aid of any of the servants, after his youngest son had ridden a horse so hard she'd colicked. Actually -- it had mostly been Yukio who'd born the brunt of the chores. Yukio had been a good kid, and in retrospect, Kenshin wondered if sometimes he'd been too hard on him because he was afraid for his safety so very often. He wished he could go back and change things, but the past was immutable.

Kenshin discovered there was nothing in the walk-in refrigerator, and it was unplugged. The pantry was likewise empty except for a few jars of home canned peaches. George grabbed two jars of peaches and said, "I'm hungry. Want some? These are from the neighbor lady. I gave the rest of the food to the food bank when they put me in the home but they wouldn't take the home-canned stuff."

Kenshin retrieved bowls from the cupboard -- they were in the same place that they had been stored since the late 1800's. The kitchen had changed a lot, of course, since then, but somehow the bowls remained on s a shelf in the cupboard to the left of the door, and plates just below them, and drinking glasses above. He used his pocket knife to pry the lids off the jars, dumped the peaches out, and served them up.

"You're awfully quiet," George said.

Kenshin sighed. "It's ... weird, being here. I keep expecting your grandfather to step around the corner, or Yukio to come slouching in. Or to see Shinya in the stable, or Byron on the piano. It's ... the memories are hard, George."

"Eh. I get that." George tried to open a drawer and had difficulty because of his broken fingers. Kenshin got the spoons out for him, and passed out the bowls of peaches.

"This old place has too many ghosts for me." Kenshin said, and wondered if any of them were literal rather than memory-ghosts.

"Can I go use your laptop?" Morgan said, suddenly. "Please?"

"Umm ..."

"I've got an assignment due Monday. I want to try to finish and turn it in."

Kenshin studied her for a moment, gauging her sincerity. She was being honest, he thought, and he nodded. "Stay downstairs in the library; we should stick close together until the word gets out that Garrett's been arrested. He could still have bad guys after us who don't know the game's up."

She shuddered.

Richie said, "What are we going to do for dinner ...?" He'd already finished his bowl of peaches.

Kenshin rubbed his forehead. "I guess -- order pizza?"

--

Morgan was two thirds of the way through her social studies paper when an instant messaging window popped up on Kenshin's laptop.

CARRIE Hey! You got a minute to talk, love?

__

Love.

Jeffrey had called her that, and other endearments. Sweetie. Sugar. Honey. Girly-mine. And half a dozen others. She felt the tears start to prickle at her eyes. She missed him so much, and she never find anyone like him again.

When she didn't answer, Carrie persisted.

CARRIE Poke Hey, you there? You left me a message that you wanted to talk to me. What's up?

Kenshin likely wanted to talk to her to tell her he was 'going home.'

And suddenly ... Morgan found herself angry. It just wasn't fair! She wanted someone to love her the way that Kenshin loved Carrie. And she'd never have that ... it wasn't fair. Why did Carrie get Kenshin and she get nobody?

She clicked on the messaging window, and answered,

KENSHIN Yeah, I'm here.

CARRIE Hey! Oh, good. I was starting to get worried about you, you know. I know you're a tough old man, but doesn't mean I don't worry!

KENSHIN Carrie, I'm really sorry.

CARRIE Oh, nothing to be sorry about. I know you were saving that girl's butt. Bet she never appreciates what you did for her, either. And I know you don't want me to say things like that, but she's a shallow little girl.

"I'll show you shallow!" Morgan hissed. She responded,

KENSHIN Carrie, I've done a lot of thinking while we've been apart. I know you love me, but I'm just not sure how I feel about you.

CARRIE What?

Morgan's lips thinned into an angry smile as she continued to answer as Kenshin.

KENSHIN I thought the age difference between us wouldn't matter, but you're so _young_. I feel like a dirty old man when I'm with you -- you're like a little girl next to me. I'm not even sure I'm attracted to you.

CARRIE What are you saying?

KENSHIN I am saying that I don't think it can work between us. What I thought was there, isn't. I was wrong. It was wrong of me to let myself love you.

CARRIE Kenshin, no! I love you! You said you loved me!

Morgan hesitated, before answering -- Kenshin was so self-sacrificing. She crafted her response carefully, imagining his humble nature as she did.

KENSHIN I am very sorry to tell you this, in this fashion. But I do not think there is an easy way to ever break up with anyone. I'm so sorry, Carrie. I'm so sorry.

CARRIE I _trusted _you.

Carrie's icon turned grey, indicating she'd signed off.

Morgan snorted. "Gullible bitch."

She figured that Carrie would figure it out eventually -- probably when Kenshin showed up at the college. If not sooner -- though it said something about Carrie's character that Carrie had believed her at all! Kenshin worshipped Carrie with a profound, and unwavering, love. How could she possibly think that Kenshin would break up with her?

Well, if she was so blind that she had believed in the "break up" -- that wasn't Morgan's problem. And it felt _good _to know someone else was hurting as bad right now as she was.


	31. Chapter 31

Shannon yawned sleepily and reached for the remote to turn his TV off. It was four in the afternoon on a Thursday, and a nap sounded lovely. He had just stripped his shirt off and kicked his shoes under the bed when someone knocked on the door. "Shannon. You there?"

He recognized Brandon's voice. Shannon started to grab his shirt up off the floor, then shrugged mentally, and walked to the door wearing just his jeans. "'Sup?"

He hoped Brandon had finally forgiven him for not inviting him to the party. He didn't see the big issue: they were only dating, not an item. Brandon was taking it far too personally.

"Hey." Brandon leaned on his canes. Without preamble, he said, "Something's up with Carrie."

"Meg said she's sick." Shannon noticed Carrie's absence in the cafeteria, and had asked her roommate. Meg had told him that Carrie was too sick to go to the party he'd planned on attending tonight. He had been disappointed, to say the least -- he thought she needed to get out and enjoy herself.

Brandon shook his head, unhappily. "She hasn't been in class all week. I knocked on her door and she just told me to go away. She sounded awful. I'm afraid something happened."

"To Ken?"

"I don't know. Meg isn't in on the details of her secret, so I'm not sure that she'd tell Meg if anything happened to him that was, umm, an Immortal-type problem."

Shannon sighed. This fell somewhere between his duties as 'resident advisor' and 'friend.' If something had happened to Kenshin, aside from his own grief, he would need to make sure she knew about the college's options for grief counseling. Though -- given the pertinent details she wouldn't be able to tell a counselor -- that might not be viable. Maybe he'd ask Richie to talk to her.

He said, finally, "I'll check it out. Hey -- do you want to go to the movies this weekend?"

Because if something had happened to Ken, he was going to need a distraction. Brandon was suitably distracting. The other option would be to sit alone in his room and get extremely drunk while thinking very morbid thoughts.

Brandon's eyes narrowed. "You never quit, do you?"

Shannon winced. Brandon was still pissed at him over the party, apparently. "Look, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings. But -- give me a chance, hm? I'm not a bad guy, really."

He tried for a winsome smile.

Brandon snorted. Obviously, the smile had been less convincing than he'd hoped for. Clearly unimpressed, Brandon said, "Don't give me that. You're not a bad guy, but you're not the sort I want to date. Not if you only want me to be your friend when it's convenient and not embarrassing."

"Brandon ..."

The man turned sharply away, and hitched himself down the hall. He didn't look back. Shannon wanted to go after him, but his feet were like lead. He couldn't deal with possibly-bad things happening to Ken, plus a fight with Brandon, too.

"Idiot!" he thought, finally, not sure if the 'idiot' was himself or Brandon. He grabbed his shirt, yanked his shoes on without socks, and went to talk to Carrie.

As it turned out, Meg was just leaving their room when he arrived. She saw him coming and said very low voice, "Did Brandon talk to you?"

"Yeah. He said something's up with Carrie."

Meg shook her head. "I've tried to talk to her. She just lays in bed and tells me to go away. She hasn't gotten out of bed since Monday night. I don't think she's sick, I think she's depressed."

"Care if I try?" He was truly worried now.

Meg shrugged. "Go for it."

Inside the room, it was dark -- the drapes were pulled. Carrie was a motionless lump under her covers. She didn't react as he walked across the room. Shannon stood beside her and said quietly, "It's Ken, isn't it?"

"Go away." Her voice was very soft.

"Did he die?" Given what he'd seen of Kenshin's life, that was a real possibility. He hated asking, but he had to know.

"I wish he'd drop dead."

"Ah." Which meant he was alive. That was a relief; he liked the man.

"Go the fuck away, Shannon." She added this without much rancor.

"Nope, not gonna." He hesitated. "Meg says you haven't been out of bed all week. Are you decent under those covers?"

"Hnh?" She pushed the covers back and eyed him suspiciously.

"Pajamas, girl?"

"Y-yeah."

Satisfied that she wasn't naked, he grabbed two fistfuls of the blanket and gave a good yank. Her covers flew across the room and landed in a messy pile on Megumi's satin sheets.

Carrie made a probably-obscene but unintelligible noise of protest and sat upright. Anger flared in her eyes. He'd been expecting for her to scream at him -- he had not been expecting to see that her eyes were red and swollen, her hair a complete mess, and somehow, in only a few days, she seemed to have lost weight.

"When was the last time you ate anything?" He was really concerned, now.

She stared at him. Then she flopped back down on the bed, face into the pillow, and ground out, "Leave. Me. Alone."

"We have two choices here," he said, grimly, "Either you get up, take a shower, and then go out to dinner with me, and then to the party we'd planned tonight, or I call the student health center and have a doc sent over. If you're refusing to eat or get out of bed, he'll likely have you committed to the hospital for observation. Alternately, they'll send you home to your parents."

"Fuck you." She said this without much energy.

"Shower. Food. Now." He pointed at the door to the room's shared bathroom.

"You're a bully."

"No, I'm a friend."

She shot him an angry glare, but she did sit up again.

He added quietly, "You'll get over him, Carrie. He's just guy. Granted, he's all sorts of cute and charismatic, but ..."

"You have no fucking idea what you're talking about." She stalked into the bathroom. After a moment, the shower came on.

He cracked the door a quarter of an inch and told her, "I'll meet you at my room in half an hour."

--

Brandon was waiting by his door when he reached it.

"She okay?"

"Ken broke up with her." Carrie hadn't actually said so, but he knew by the way she was acting that there was only one good explanation. It pissed him off in all sorts of ways; if he saw Kenshin again, he might just slug him. He had _liked _Kenshin. But his sympathies were solidly with Carrie on this one; you didn't have to be a fool there to realize that Kenshin was far older, far savvier, and far less innocent. Carrie had fallen for him hard because he'd put some real effort into charming her.

Hell, he'd whisked her off to a fancy vacation at a seaside resort. A guy didn't do that unless he wanted the girl to think he was really interested -- either because he wanted a relationship with the girl, or he wanted in her pants. Until now, Shannon had assumed 'relationship' but now he wondered what Kenshin's real motives had been.

"Shit." Brandon rocked back on his crutches and straightened up to his entire height.

"How could he _do _that her?" Shannon thumped his fist against the wall.

"Just goes to show you don't really know a guy until you fuck him." Brandon shrugged philosophically.

"_I _would never do that to someone."

"Oh, c'mon!" Brandon snorted a laugh. "You've got a different girlfriend every week, and now you're looking to add boyfriends to your conquests!"

"I --" Shannon stared at Brandon for a moment. "-- Is that what you really think I'm about?"

Yeah, he liked sex. Most of his partners did, too. He didn't think that was relevant.He'd never left a girl so utterly devastated in his life. If he was sleeping with someone recreationally, he made damn sure they understood that. Mostly, the girls were just out for the same thing. The few who had taken him seriously after he told them he just wanted a bed partner, not a girlfriend -- well, he didn't feel too sorry for their broken hearts. He'd _told _them the truth, and they'd chosen not to believe it.

"Why else would you be hitting on me?" He heard bitterness there, in Brandon's voice.

"Because I like you -- and just because I sleep around," he said, through gritted teeth, "doesn't mean I would do what Kenshin did. There's a difference between a quick fun fuck and loving 'em and leaving 'em. The girls I date aren't _wanting _a relationship."

Brandon glared. "Yeah? What about the boy you've been hitting on?"

Shannon stared at him, sighed, very heavily. "Brandon. You're different. You're very different."

"Yeah. I bet you tell the pretty girls that too."

"What the hell is _wrong _with you?" That stung, that Brandon wouldn't believe him.

"Forget it." Brandon shook his head. "Just forget it. What are we going to do for Carrie?"

"I'm taking her out to dinner, and then out to the party." Shannon met Brandon's gaze with a dirty look of his own. "Distract her. And remind her that she has friends, even if Kenshin's a complete idiot."

Brandon snorted. He hesitated, one cane held an inch off the ground. It seemed as if he had something more to say, but then he simply shook his head and turned around. Over his shoulder, as he hitched himself away, he said, "See you around, pretty boy."

--

Carrie ripped a comb through her curls, impatient at the snarls that had formed from a few days of not tending them. She didn't really care that she was yanking out chunks of hair. Kenshin had told her more than once that he loved her hair and suddenly, she was angry.

She remembered him letting her hair down from a braid, fingers reverently stroking through her curls before he'd kissed the nape of her neck and told her she was beautiful ...

Had that all been a lie? Everything he'd said, his promise to return to her, had it all been a _lie_? She'd known him for almost half her life, and unfortunately, Kenshin was honest to the point of pain. If he said something to you, you could damn well assume it was true. He didn't lie about his own feelings, ever, on anything.

"You ready?"

Shannon's voice, muffled by the door, still made her jump. She shouted back, "Just a second!"

She yanked one last tangle out, pulled her hair back with a scrunchy, and scrutinized herself briefly in the mirror. She was wearing an old t-shirt, which was the only thing she had that was clean, and a pair of jeans that at least passed the sniff-test. If Shannon wanted her to look girly, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

She really didn't care. Laundry was low on her list of priorities. Kenshin had done hers the last few weeks, anyway. She wasn't even sure where the laundromat was.

She grabbed her sword out of pure habit, without even thinking about it, and tied to her belt. She started to reach for her overcoat, then stopped. Kenshin had given her that coat, saying it was too long for him. She could hide the sword without it, with a bit of mental illusion. It was starting to get chilly outside at night, but it wasn't _that_ cold.

"I'm coming in if you're not ready really quick here ..."

__

Bossy man, she thought, with the first amusement she'd felt in several days. Shannon's real concern for her was clearly audible in his voice. Shannon was a dear, she thought; he was everybody's big brother. She opened the door, and said, mildly, "I'm ready."

"Good." He grinned. "I was wondering if I'd have to come in and physically kidnap you."

"You'd do it, too."

"You bet I would." His eyes twinkled. "Except that you could break me in two if you wanted to."

"Well, yeah," she admitted, a smile touching her lips.

"So, am I right in thinking that Ken broke up with you?" He asked, gently. He rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, a touch that felt a bit like a hug, only less intimate.

"No." She said, through gritted teeth. His question stung -- there was shame there, that she hadn't been worthy, and anger, that he'd taken advantage of her, and a sense of helpless despair and loss. She'd thought he would be hers forever -- she'd _married _him once, in a past lifetime. What was so different, this time around? Had she been so much better in her past life that she paled in comparison, this time around?

She continued, hearing a level of sarcasm and snark in her own voice that shocked her, "We're going to get married tomorrow, live happily ever after, and adopt lots of little children. -- Yeah, the bastard broke up with me."

"Do you think he did it to protect you?"

She'd considered that, briefly. However, if Kenshin was breaking up with her for her own safety, he would have told her that. It would have been less painful, and it would have been less final. Instead, he'd told her the truth. He was honest to a fault, and he'd simply told her the _truth, _probablybecause he felt she deserved it. She shook her head, "No, he said he wasn't as attracted to me as he thought. He said I was too young. And that he was sorry. He could have figured that out _earlier_, you think?"

At least he had told her the truth. If he had lied and said he was breaking up with her for her own protection, she would have carried false hope of a future with him someday.

"Ouch." Shannon blinked at her, then sighed. "He's more of a fool than I thought, then, Carrie. You're _awesome._"

"Th-thanks." Tears prickled at her eyes. She only wished Kenshin thought she was awesome too. It hurt, with a nearly physical pain, to know that the man she had begun to consider her soulmate ... didn't want her.

"C'mon." He rested a hand on her shoulder again, "I'll buy you dinner. And then there's a party."

"I'm not really in a party mood." She just wanted to go crawl back into bed.

"Well, yeah, but you promised to come. You're not going to make me go _alone_, will you? I'll look stupid if I can't even get a date on a Friday night. They'll make fun of me. They'll say I'm a loser or -- horrors -- gay!"

She found herself smiling. He was shamelessly guilt tripping her, and his concern was touching. "I think there's a guy who'd like to go with you."

He shook his head, quickly, and said in a quieter tone of voice, "I think Brandon's decided he's not interested in me. At least, he keeps telling me off every time I try to talk to him."

"Oh. I'm sorry about that." She had been sure the two would hit it off. There was a great deal of chemistry there, and she knew -- from the way that Shannon looked at Brandon -- that Shannon was definitely interested in the man.

"Ah, well. I'll just have to resign myself to an evening with _you_. I don't know how I'll possibly survive it." Shannon's teasing tone was light, and made her briefly smile again.

It was funny, how he seemed to know how to make her feel better. There had been chemistry between the two of them since they'd first met, she thought -- not attraction, but a certain relaxed understanding.

"C'mon, if we hurry, we'll be able to get a table at the buffet without waiting."

She nodded, and suddenly fighting back tears again, she followed him down the hall, It hurt so much, that Kenshin had rejected her. As well intentioned as Shannon's attention was, she couldn't help but think that she would have preferred her date to be Kenshin.

--

Carrie was silent through the meal. Shannon found himself carrying the bulk of the conversation. He told her about class, and dorm gossip, and tried to engage her in a conversation about Immortals -- she shut him down, there, with a quick, "Not in public. I'll answer your questions later."

Shannon tried to tease her into a smile on multiple occasions, with casual banter. Sometimes, her lips curved upwards, but the expression didn't really meet her eyes.

He wanted to castrate Kenshin. Or maybe, the next time he saw him, he might just deck him on Carrie's behalf. Unfortunately, he couldn't give Kenshin a lasting black eye, but he could get his point across.

--

The party was loud. Music thumped from oversize speakers set in the back yard of somebody's house. Kids played in a heated pool; it was an expensive house in the suburbs.

Carrie tried to forget how much she missed Kenshin. Shannon had been teasing her and being funny and cheerful the whole evening. He was trying hard to cheer her up; she wanted to let him succeed. She wanted to be happy.

She felt empty.

"Here." Shannon appeared at her elbow, and handed her a purple colored drink.

"I just had a beer," she protested. And a glass of wine with dinner, earlier. She was a little giddy. Both her father and Kenshin had admonished her about the dangers of too much alcohol for an Immortal -- and for a girl in general.

"One more won't hurt you," he said, sounding concerned. "It'll help you loosen up and actually enjoy this night."

He actually had a point. Maybe if she got drunk, she could forget how much she was hurting. At least, for a little bit. And _damn Kenshin _anyway, and his warnings about booze anyway. She accepted the drink and cautiously sipped it. It tasted like soda and grape juice, with the sharply biting taste of alcohol mixed in.

"Purple Jesus," he said, "except I think they ran out of the ginger ale. There's 7-Up in it."

"Purple Jesus?" It was a funny name.

"Grape Juice, vodka, and, ah, normally ginger ale."

She took another swallow. She could taste the vodka, but it wasn't that strong of a flavor. It reminded her of a grape juice soda. Perhaps they were running low on booze. Relaxing a bit, and no longer concerned that the drink was going to knock her out cold with two swallows, she sampled it again.

"C'mon, I want to introduce you to some friends of mine." He caught her free hand and led her off in the direction of a clump of large, muscular boys. They were clustered around a beer keg.

"Hey!" Shannon called at the young men.

The biggest, beefiest of the four guys greeted him with a, "Hey, bro!" back.

"This's a friend of mine, Carrie." Shannon put his arm around her shoulder, and she realized he was a little drunk when he did. She could smell the cheap beer on his breath. He'd had a couple cans of Keystone -- the beer keg had just arrived; the boys were setting it up.

Shannon said cheerfully, and a bit loudly, "Isn't she cute?"

She tried to shove him away, both flattered by the drunken compliment and a little disturbed. Shannon obligingly let her go. She stumbled away, then felt embarrassed by her reaction. It was Shannon; he was harmless.

"Doesn't look like she likes you much, Girly-boy." The biggest boy smirked.

"Hey! Don't call me that!" Shannon said, sounding upset. Then to Carrie, he explained, "They always call me that. Cuz of my name. It pisses me off." He turned back to them, "It pisses me off. You hear me?"

Yeah, he was drunk. So were the other boys. They were more drunk than Shannon, actually.

Carrie took a swig of her Purple Jesus. She was getting a little lightheaded herself -- she told herself she'd stop after this drink. Then, in a placating tone of voice, she said, "Settle down, Shannon. It is kindof a girly name."

She clamped her mouth shut, astonished she'd said that. How -- why -- oh. She realized she felt _weird_. She looked down into the cup of adulterated grape juice, and realized she'd drank most of it in several gulps. Despite her lack of coat, she was warm and she'd been drinking it like it was Kool-aid.

Ken had told her a few times to savor alcohol, and that if it was too cheap a drink to _savor_, then she shouldn't be drinking it anyway.

"Ken,-nii you're an idiot," she said, aloud, and finished the drink in one long swallow. And she told herself this tasted good. It was sweet and bubbly.

Shannon turned around and said curiously, "What did you say?"

"Nothing! Nothing!" She looked into her cup again. Yeah, she was drunk. "I think-think there's something wrong with this. It's making me intox-intoxicated."

He giggled. "You don't drink much, do you?"

"M'dad never let me. 'Cause of the swords. Bad for an ..."

"Carrie," he interrupted her, "you don't want to talk about being Immortal in front of other people."

"You just did."

The boys were staring at her.

She said lightly to them, "Pretend you didn't hear him say anything, will you? Is a secret."

Shannon said, "Yeah, she pretends to be Immortal. It's a joke."

"You're dating a freak," one of the boy said. He laughed. "She's cute, but she's a freak! At least she's not that fag my sister saw you with last week!"

"Carrie's not a freak!" Shannon balled his fists up again. "She's sweet and beautiful and her boyfriend's an ass for dumping her and ..." He paused. "Brandon's not a fag. Okay, he is, but he's not. Oh, you know what I mean ... he's m'friend, even if he hates me right now 'cause I wouldn't invite him here 'cause you guys would be mean to him."

"You're drunk," Carrie said, catching his arm. She sensed an incipient fight, and decided to distract him. She also wondered about Shannon's friends, who would so casually insult him. "C'mon, let's dance."

Shannon started to argue, and she gave him a harder tug. "Dance!" she said insistently.

"Lady says dance, Girly-boy," the biggest of the jocks said, laughing. "You _do _know how to dance with a lady, right?"

"I sure do," Shannon said. "Don't call me ..."

"Prove it," she hissed, and managed to tow him away from his so-called friends.

Dancing drunk, she discovered, was a hell of a lot of fun. She was less self conscious, and her rhythm was better. Shannon, by contrast, was all elbows and feet, and he kept stepping on her, but he was so cute she didn't care. Why hadn't she noticed how cute he was? His eyes were sparkling with good humor, and he kept laughing -- his earlier irritation at his friends was quickly forgotten.

She might not have Kenshin anymore, but she decided she _was _having a good time -- she was dancing with a rather attractive man, and doing something totally normal. A party. Dancing. Hell, did this really count as a date? Maybe it did.

After a bit, she was hot, and thirsty. She went for another drink, with Shannon trailing after her. Somehow, he kept touching her -- his arm around her waist, or his hands on her shoulders. "N-not much vodka," she said, warningly, to the man who was pouring drinks. She didn't want to get plastered, because that would be dangerous. But one more wouldn't hurt, would it?

To her satisfaction, the man filled the red plastic cup with what looked like a small amount -- maybe an inch and a half -- of vodka in the bottom. Then he dumped in a mix of grape juice and the 7-Up, and a couple ice cubes.

What was an inch and a half of vodka in the bottom of a red plastic picnic cup equal to? A beer, maybe? So she'd had two beers -- well, plus the actual beer she'd had earlier, and a glass of wine before that. It didn't _sound _like that much. She told herself that her level of drunken-ness was all in her imagination.

Thirsty, she gulped down the glass of juice. It tasted good; impulsively, she handed the cup back for a refill. The man sloshed in more vodka this time, with a smirk at her. Mentally, she tagged that at about four beers, which was more than she'd ever consumed before, but then again, one beer only made her faintly giddy. Or was that four-and-a-half beers? Plus a cup of wine. Her thinking was a bit fuzzy, she found

Rebelliously, she downed the entire cup. "C'mon, let's dance some more!" She towed Shannon back towards the speakers. He had a can of beer in each of his hands; he drained them both dry before joining her.

He was laughing.

Everything was bright and sparkly and _fun_. She was laughing too. Even when she fell down, it was _fun. _

Shannon pulled her back to her feet after the second time that the ground went vertical. "I think you've had a bit."

"Only four-and-a-half beers!" she told him. And added, "I tripped over my sword. Can you see it? Because it would be really bad if people could see it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Purple Jes-Jeshus is _not _beer. Is vodka and grape juice. And stuff. It's the evil."

She knew that. "It's grape juice!" she flung her arms around his neck, impulsively, and kissed him. And he was kissing her back. And his hands were touching her. And she didn't mind at all; she was really, really too drunk to even care.

"Damn him anyway!" She wasn't sure if she spoke the words aloud, or just thought them. To make sure that she got the point across, she repeated, louder, "DAMN him!"

Shannon, giggling, arm around her shoulder, said, "Damn him is right. Kenshin's an idiot."

"Idiot." She liked the sound of that. "Kenshin no baka, in Japanese."

"Mucho estupido."

"What's that?"

"Spanish."

For some reason, she found this hilarious. But then Shannon stopped her laughter entirely by planting a sloppy kiss on her mouth. His breath smelled of beer.

"You taste like grape juice," he said, then slid his hands up under her shirt.

She wondered if she should stop him. Nah. She wondered if she should be scared. But, nah. She wasn't even sure she could remember _why _this sort of thing scared her.

Then he was doing something with his hands that totally distracted her, and he was simultaneously steering her towards the house. "G'home," he said, "Call cab."

"Yeah, cab. Too drunk to drive."

He giggled. "Too drunk to _walk_. Can you get a ticket for drunk walking?"

"Y-yeah. Is called public intoxica-cation." She was sure on that point. She nodded firmly. Then something occurred to her, "I c-could lose my head. Someone find me, I'm screwed."

"Go home now." He nodded. He fumbled in his pocket. "Shit, I can't find my cell phone. Do you have one?"

"Dunno." Why was he asking her for a cell phone?

He stuck his hand into her pockets while she leaned and swayed against him. He found hers. Oh, cab, right. She finally figured out why he wanted a phone. He needed to find a phone to get a cab. It wouldn't come on its own!

She was glad he was making the call; she wasn't sure she could have figured out how to operate the phone.

"I'm publicly intoxoxicationed," she informed him, gravely, with another firm nod.

"Me too." He was giggling a lot. He got the cab company on the phone then, and said in a dramatic tone of voice. "We're publicly intoxicationed and we need a ride!"

After he gave the dispatcher directions, he turned his attention back to her. He rested his hands on her shoulders and said, "C-can I kiss you again? 'Cuz it's really fun."

She wondered if she should say no. But he didn't wait for her to respond; he just stuck his tongue in her mouth and started rubbing her back. Somehow, she found she was touching him back without even thinking about it. They were rubbing together, mouths tasting of beer and juice, hands everywhere. His hands, her hands. He cupped her ass and pulled her close.

"I want you," he whispered in her ear. Then he licked her ear.

She was dizzy. Everything was a blur. She laughed, and she didn't know why. There were tears in her eyes, and she didn't know why she was crying, either.

The cab came.

The next thing she registered was that they were stumbling up the stairs at the dorm. Somehow, she'd lost the whole ride home. Had she fallen asleep? Except she didn't even remember getting _out _of the taxi. She must have slept-walked into the dorm.

Brandon was in the hallway.

"Hey, Brandy," Shannon slurred, waving cheerfully. "'m not the only one with a girly-name."

She wondered why Brandon gave Shannon such an incredibly dirty look. Brandon said shortly, "I rest my case."

What was _that _about?

But then Shannon was guiding her through the door into his room. The mystery of the case that Brandon was resting would need to wait for another day. Shannon's hands were on her. And her clothes were coming off. His, too. He was fumbling a condom on, which she found absolutely hysterical -- she tried to tell him it wasn't necessary, and he insisted, stubbornly, while clumsily struggling with the little foil package, "I _always _wear one. Fucking always. I'm not stupid!"

He tried to roll it on himself. It didn't seem to be working right. He peered at it, bending over rather flexibly. "Oh, umm, guess it's upside down. I know how to work these things, really."

And then he was pushing her back to the mattress.

She really didn't remember much after that point.

--


	32. Chapter 32

Shannon woke to a ferociously pounding headache. His mouth tasted like something had crawled into it and died. And his stomach was threatening to turn itself inside out.

"Nggg."

That had been some party last night -- if getting completely plastered had counted as _some party_. He probably owed Carrie an apology; he had planned more fun and less drunk. His last clear memory was ...

Oh, shit.

He was pretty sure he'd had sex with her. He vaguely remembered Carrie barfing right after he'd climaxed. And his room smelled of alcoholic puke, which wasn't helping his stomach _now._

If he was going to have sex with Carrie, he would have preferred to have been a lot more sober while doing it. Preferably, stone cold sober. And with a discussion beforehand about what it meant to both of them. He _really _hoped she wasn't going to take this the wrong way.

He lifted his head, and realized Carrie was beside the bed. Likely, her moving around had woken him up. She was cleaning the vomit up with a rag. When he looked up, she flinched.

"I puked. Sorry."

"D-don't apologize." He flung the covers off. He was completely naked under them, and she flinched again and averted her eyes. He looked down at himself, reflexively, and realized the condom was stuck to his leg with drying semen. He scraped it off with his fingernails, rose, and went to the bathroom to clean himself up. And barf. His stomach was definitely queasy.

God, his head hurt. It hurt even to think, though his thoughts were a whirl anyway. Waking up with Carrie in his room was not exactly what he'd had intended.

The night was pretty much a blur. He had a vague memory of calling a cab, and of stumbling up the stairs. And sex. Because it had seemed like the thing to do, given _pretty girl in my room_ and all, and she'd been more-or-less willing. He wondered how _enthusiastic _she had been, but she hadn't said no. He was pretty sure that there wasn't a level of drunkenness in the world that would make him ignore a _no_.

However, after about six or seven beers, his best judgment had gone entirely out the window.

Carrie, he recalled, had been drinking Purple Jesuses. He'd started her with one because didn't think she was all that experienced with alcohol and had figured that she would find the taste more palatable than Keystone beer. He had not expected her to go for multiple more. Those things were lethal, and there had to have been two or three shots of vodka in _each _serving, judging by the way they'd been sloshing it into the cups. Cheap vodka, at that.

God, his head hurt. Given what Carrie had been drinking, he was betting hers was worse. Cheap vodka trumped Keystone any day for the headache department. Which was why he'd gone for the beer.

Again with the not-expecting-Carrie-to-get-plastered bit.

He eyed the shower, and waffled between going right out now to talk to Carrie, and waiting a bit. Waiting a bit won, but only because he figured he was still drunk, and a cold shower would sober him up the rest of the way. And he needed it; he had both Carrie's barf and other bodily fluids on him, plus alcoholic-something-sticky in his hair. Vaguely, he remembered she'd puked on _him _before puking on the floor, and equally vaguely, he remembered telling her that it was okay, everyone puked after that much vodka. And then he'd probably passed out.

He wasn't sure if she would wait for him to finish, but when he emerged, she was sitting on his bed with her back to the wall. She was, he realized belatedly, wearing one of his t-shirts. As tall as she was, it was only a little bit big. She'd also snagged a pair of his clean boxers.

"I threw up on my clothes." She picked at the shirt with her fingers.

"Look, Carrie, I'm _sorry._" He massaged his forehead. His brains were throbbing.

"For what?" she said, after a flinch at his words. Then, lips pursed thinly, she looked away from him. "I get it, Shannon. This is where you tell me you didn't intend to sleep with me, that we were both really drunk, and that you just want to be friends. I'm cool with that."

Except that she wasn't. He could tell by the way she wouldn't meet his eyes.

His head hurt. He could still taste throwup and last night's beer in his mouth. He had no clue what to say. Except, "I really am sorr ..."

"Isn't making love at least supposed to be fun?" she asked quietly. By her tone, he figured she hadn't really enjoyed the proceedings of the night before. He wasn't surprised, but he winced anyway. He _really _should have kept his pants on. He'd been too drunk to make it enjoyable for her. And she'd been too drunk to care. At the time.

The room still smelled rather nasty.

Gently, he said, "Hon, that wasn't making love. That was bad drunk sex."

"Oh."

He sighed. "Look, I know ... I know you're the sort of girl who wants some romance with her sex. I'm _sorry _about last night. I never should have ... well, I was drunk, and you were interested ..."

She sniffed. He thought she might be about to cry. She whispered, "I never ... I always thought it'd be with a man I love."

He sighed. "Sometimes, sex is just about having a good time between friends, without the love involved -- but last night? Wasn't even that. It was just bad, angry sex. We were both mad at our -- well, your ex, and my never-was. And I should have known better. I've got a lot more experience than ..."

She rose, suddenly.

"Carrie ..."

She stood up. His shirt hung down around her thighs, hiding his boxers from view. "I'm going back to my room now. I ... I ... I can't talk about this right now."

"Okay."

He hoped he hadn't lost her as a friend forever.

She smiled thinly. "Next time you want to cheer me up, let's leave the booze out of it."

He barked a laugh, surprised more than anything else that she could even joke. He felt like he'd raped her. It hadn't been, not really, but if he'd been sober he would have known better. Carrie just wasn't that sort of girl -- not the sort who would ever be happy about a casual fuck.

He'd hurt her. Badly.

He wanted to die of humiliation.

She said quietly, "I'm sorry. I should have said no. I just ... I was proving something to myself, I think. And I've hurt you. I'm _sorry._"

And before he could deny that, and tell her it was okay, that he wasn't upset ... she ran out the door. He thought she was crying, but he couldn't be sure.

In the trash by his desk, there were a couple of beer bottles. He saw them as he was walking by it with the nebulous idea of getting dressed. Suddenly angry -- at himself, at the world, at alcohol -- he seized them out of the litter of other garbage and threw them hard against the wall. They shattered violently in a spray of glass.

"Damn it all, anyway."

Then he stood alone in the room. He had no clue what to do now.

His head hurt. So did his heart.

--

There was one Immortal in the dojo when Chiyoko chained her bike to a street lamp in the parking lot. She could feel them -- and, like Kenshin who had trained her, she was pretty good at reading _ki _and thought she know who it was.

And Carrie was extremely agitated. Kenshin's girlfriend was normally a little bit high strung, but this was way beyond anything she'd ever sensed from her before. She was unfocused, shaken to her core, and absolutely upset -- in a mood like that, Chiyoko thought, she'd be an easy target for a headhunter.

Chiyoko entered the dojo with her gym bag in one hand and her motorcycle helmet in the other -- her entrance caused Carrie to look up, then the younger woman returned to slamming her bare fists into a punching bag. Carrie was covered in sweat, her hair hanging in damp curls, and she was breathing hard.

__

Something wrong there, Chiyoko noted, with alarm. Without preamble, she said, "Did something happen to Kenshin?"

Carrie hit the bag harder. Chiyoko noted Carrie's knuckles were bruised and bloodied. Her anger flared. This seemed more like an angry-girlfriend mood than a grieving-girlfriend mood.

"He used to piss Kaoru off too, you know."

__

That got her a startled look. And Chiyoko also thought, _But never to this degree. Kaoru was quick to anger, but also quick to forgive. And mostly it was domestic spats over meals and shopping and chores._

"He told me." Chiyoko saw no reason not to let on she knew. "That you were her reincarnation. Kaoru's, I mean."

"You know about ..."

Chiyoko snorted. "I knew you before too. It's pretty obvious, once someone points it out."

Carrie sighed. She bit out, "Well, he broke up with me."

Carrie's _ki _had contracted into a grieving, formless mass of unfocused and disorganized chaos at her words. Chiyoko honestly wasn't sure what to say -- it was utterly unexpected. Kenshin had been married to Kaoru for decades, and it had been a timeless love between them.

"He's protecting you." She said that decisively, after a moment's real surprise. "Hon, Ken loves you dearly. If he broke up, it was for your protection."

"No," Carrie said, simply. "he told me it was because he wasn't attracted to me because I was so much younger. I'm _not _Kaoru, and I think he must have finally realized it."

Chiyoko blinked at that. She was surprised. She'd seen the way that Ken looked at Carrie. But perhaps that had simply been a man looking at a woman who was effectively the ghost of his dead wife ... and seeing only the _wife_.

Bitterly, Kaoru said, "It sucks. I thought he was _it _for me."

Chiyoko sighed, and resolved to talk to Ken sometime soon -- Joe had told her that the problems with the Morgan brat were all over except for the leftover family drama, and that Kenshin was on his way home -- he was apparently trying to get a flight standby as of early that morning. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, I am too." Carrie brushed her curls out of her eyes.

Chiyoko studied Carrie closely. She wondered if there was more to the story. For all of Kenshin's good points, he had a fiercely judgmental streak and he was entirely capable of repudiating a friend who had committed certain offenses. She asked carefully, "Are you sure you didn't do anything to piss him off? Kenshin ... he'll tell it like it is. He kicked me out when I was sixteen, you know."

"He did?" Carrie looked at her curiously. "And no. I haven't done anything. At least -- not before he dumped me."

There was no deceit in her soul, only a sense of terrible confusion.

"I had it coming, too. Long story short, I killed a mortal." Chiyoko snorted after this brief explanation, then added, "Slightly longer version, I got my heart broken by a boy, had sex with Marshall, and then killed a man who tried to rescue me from him."

Carrie flinched. Hard.

Chiyoko sighed at Carrie's reaction. She confessed, "I think I killed the wrong man that day. Anyway ... you said you hadn't done anything before he dumped you?"

Carrie turned bright red, and wouldn't meet Chiyoko's eyes. You didn't have to be a practitioner of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu to detect that she was being distinctly evasive. "I got really drunk last night."

"Eh. One of the advantages of being Immortal -- no hangovers. As long as you don't lose your head while you're plastered, you'll survive." Chiyoko had an idea that being drunk wasn't actually what Carrie was referring to, but rather, something she'd done while drunk. But she was willing to play dumb unless Carrie wanted to volunteer more. "Taking the Quickening of a drunk isn't all it's cracked up to be, either."

Carrie gave her a suspicious look.

"He was a very bad man," Chiyoko said, somberly, in explanation of how she knew what drunk Quickenings were like. She was _not _Kenshin, damnit, and she knew how to _use _her sword when needed.

Carrie let it go. "Chiyoko-san, I don't know what to do. I was really drunk last night and I slept with a guy."

Chiyoko bit back her first response, which was, _If he's any good, go back for round two? _Instead, she said sympathetically, "You would have rather that he be Kenshin, hm?"

Carrie suddenly sobbed, and that startled Chiyoko. She hadn't been expecting tears, mostly because it had been an awful long time since _she _had cried over a guy.

"Sorry." Carrie said. "Shannon's such a sweet guy, and he's a friend, and ..."

Chiyoko coughed. That was unexpected. "You slept with Shin ... Shannon?"

Carrie's expression was openly dismayed. "I know. He's gay."

"Well, not exactly," Chiyoko shook her head. "He'll end up with Byr... Brandon, though. He's not ..."

Carrie shook her head in disagreement, rapidly, while blinking away tears. "I'm not sure Brandon wants him. Brandon wants a long-term relationship with someone. He wants love. Shannon likes sex. A lot. He's had all sorts of partners, all of them girls. Brandon disapproves, I think mostly because he's threatened by Shannon's girlfriends."

__

Wonder if he'd like a short Asian chick who looks like she's twelve? Chiyoko thought, then gave the thought probably more consideration than it deserved. _He knows what Immortals are. And he's damn handsome. And if he isn't interested in Byron ... Brandon ... hmm._

Unfortunately, Chiyoko had a sneaking suspicion that Kenshin would strongly disapprove of any sort of dalliance between her and Shannon, if only because Kenshin was an utter romantic and would be rooting for Shannon and Brandon. He would see her bedding Shannon as interfering with fate.

__

It's probably best not to piss Kenshin off. There's other fish in the sea.

Besides, she already knew how that would turn out. Bedding Shannon _would _be repeating the mistakes of the past.

Unfortunately, most of the other fish she knew weere either perverted and _wanted _her to look twelve, damnit. Normal guys who might be interested in a roll in the hay with her were few and far between. Shannon was sensitive enough, and knew Immortals; he might actually see her as ... what? Old enough to be his great-great-great-grandmother?

Feh. That was a mess she just wasn't going to get involved in.

Chiyoko said, "Shannon's more ... open minded, I think, than gay. Though I suspect he prefers men a little bit over women."

"You talk like you know him."

Chiyoko shrugged. She wasn't going to tell Carrie about Shannon's past lives. Carrie had enough worries on her plate. She said hesitantly, "Are you _sure _Ken broke up with you? With finality, I mean?"

"What me to show you the messages on ICQ?" The bitterness in Carrie's voice rang true.

__

Kenshin-papa, what were you thinking? _You didn't even break up with her in person?_

"No, I believe you." Chiyoko sighed. Maybe Kenshin had simply been giving her the hard truth as soon as possible. She could see that, really -- Kenshin had been so very much in love with Kaoru that he might have latched onto Carrie without truly seeing the differences between them. Then, later, he might have realized he'd made a mistake.

__

You could have at least called her.

Chiyoko figured that she was going to have some honest words for Kenshin when she saw him next, too.

Men! She thought with savage annoyance. Apparently, even Kenshin wasn't immune from being a stupid male. _Well, I knew that._

"I'm sorry," Chiyoko said.

"What do I even _do _now?" Carrie sat down hard on a bench along one wall.

"Go on with your life." Chiyoko hesitated. Then she added, "Quite honestly? If I were you? I'd go do some stuff I enjoy. Go out to the movies with your friends. Hang out. Enjoy yourself. It hurts, but being broken up isn't the worst thing that can happen to you -- and I say this with a _lot _of experience in being broken up with."

"I can't believe I slept with Shannon. I don't even remember most of it."

Chiyoko sighed, again. She chose her words carefully, "There's more than one reason to have sex. It can be an incredible affirmation of a love between two people who are soulmates. Or it can just be for fun, recreational. I'm not sure either's wrong."

"Have you ever ... really loved somebody? That way?" Carrie seemed fascinated.

Chiyoko sighed. "Once."

"What happened?"

"He lost his head."

"Oh."

"Carrie, you're going to live centuries. You will _have _those lovers." Chiyoko rested a hand on the other girl's arm. "But not every lover you have will be special And stupid drunken sex, it happens. God knows, it's happened to me more times than I care to admit."

And she really didn't want to tell Carrie _who _her stupid-drunken-sex had happened with, more often than not. The girl was traumatized enough. She continued, " -- which is why I don't get drunk much anymore. You'll find most Immortals develop a brain or die when it comes to alcohol."

"Oh."

"If you're going to go get that plastered, call me. We can go together. Or go to my place." Chiyoko flicked her hair back over her shoulder with a sweep of her hand and said, "You're a good kid. I don't want to see you die."

"I didn't plan on getting that drunk," Carrie said, defensively. "I had these drinks -- grape juice and vodka and ..."

"I rest my case. You need to take someone experienced with you if you're going to party. _Not _Shannon; boys that age are always idiots about booze." Chiyoko frowned at her. "Carrie, _are _you going to be okay?"

"Y-yeah."

Chiyoko thought Carrie was lying. She put a hand on Carrie's arm. "Remember you have friends beyond Kenshin."

Carrie gave her a wan smile. "Thanks, Chiyoko-san."

--

Carrie hesitated for a long moment at Shannon's door. She could hear music on the other side: the band Kansas, she thought. Kenshin loved them too.

Finally, she knocked on the door. The music shut off and then Shannon opened the door.

"Hey." She couldn't quite meet his eyes.

"C'mon in."

It was dark in the room; he'd pulled his blinds. The bed looked thoroughly slept in. Given that his room was usually neat, she figured he must have been sleeping.

"How's your head?" he asked. By the way he was squinting she thought he had a bit of a hangover still.

"I'm Immortal." She said this, then pressed her lips together, wondering if she should have reminded him of that.

It clearly took him a minute to figure out why she'd given that response to a question about her hangover. Then he groaned and said, "I hate you. That's totally unfair."

He was teasing, but she responded quietly, "I hope not."

He gestured at the couch. "Have a seat. I guess you want to talk about what happened."

Carrie said quietly, without sitting down, "I want to do it again."

"Huh?"

"Shannon ..." she flailed for words. "I want it better this time."

He took a step backwards, away from her. "Carrie, I think you misunderstand ..."

"I _know _you only see me as a friend, you idiot." She folded her arms, a bit crossly. "Look. We both feel awful about what happened. Let's do it again. And do it right."

"That has to be the most unique proposition I've ever had." Shannon bumped into bed with the back of his calves. He sat down hard, making the mattress springs creak.

"Don't you, umm, want to?" She'd come to the conclusion that she wanted to do this after speaking to Chiyoko, mostly because she wanted to prove to herself that it wasn't awful and she _could _do it. She had not considered that Shannon might say no.

He stared at her. "You'd give me another chance?"

"Could you make it better ...?"

"Uh, yeah. I think an android could make it better than what we did last night."

"You are a geek," she said, with a hint of a smile.

He laughed. "Um, okay, I guess."

"Good."

They stared at each other. She wondered what to do next. Should she get up, walk over, and kiss him? She was _terrified_, she realized. And unlike Kenshin, Shannon would have no idea why she was so scared. And she had no intention of telling him; it was just too personal.

He cleared his throat. "However, I am absolutely starving. Before we do anything, let's go get something to eat. No booze, just food."

"Okay."

She didn't think he was stalling. Was he?

--

She made an effort to be casual at dinner.

Shannon seemed to be doing the same.

They got pizza. It had pepperoni and mushrooms on his half, and meatballs and pepperoni and sausage on hers. She would have added onions and peppers, normally, but didn't want onion breath for ... later.

"You eat like a guy," he teased,

"You betcha," she shot back. "Work out like one, too."

Though, really, she didn't normally eat like this. Both her father and Kenshin were big on health food. In the weeks that Kenshin had been here, she'd eaten a lot of fish, fruits, and vegetables, with the odd small serving of beef or chicken. Since she had no talent whatsoever for cooking, so Kenshin had done most of it.

The thought made her sad.

Shannon said, "Maybe ... maybe we could work out together someday."

"I go jogging every morning. Before breakfast."

She hadn't, for the last week. But she knew she needed to start again. It would be good to have company. It wouldn't be Kenshin, but Shannon was a friend.

A friend with benefits, apparently.

He said, "If you don't mind me being really slow ..."

She smiled. It would be less lonely.

--

When they walked back to the dorm, Shannon put his arm around her shoulders. It was casual, and she'd seen him do the same thing to other girls -- and Brandon -- more than once.

Still, she leaned into the touch. It felt good to be held by someone, and it was a cool night. The stars were out, and crickets chirped.

At the picnic table, they stopped. The moon was full, and very bright. He caught her hands in his and said, "Do you really want to come to my room tonight?"

__

No, she thought, but she said, "Yes."

A terrible wave of loneliness washed over her. But she reached for him anyway, hoping that, perhaps, the touch would ease the grief. Somebody found her attractive. Somebody wanted her. Even if it was just a sham, just make believe.

His lips touched hers, and his arms tightened around her. He kissed her, then, and his hands spread across her ass. He was an inch or two taller than her; it was different, needing to turn her face up to the guy. He made little noises in the back of his throat, and turned his attention to her ears, her neck, and she let him ... he sounded like he was enjoying himself.

What was she supposed to be feeling? Passion? Excitement?

In the past, she'd felt fear. Somehow, that was gone. She knew what would happen. She knew if she said, _stop_, Shannon would.

He was nibbling at her collarbone now, and cupping one breast through her t-shirt. She arched her back and made an experimental groan, though she wasn't aroused. Encouraged, however, he clutched her tighter with his free arm and ground against her. She felt a hard lump grind into stomach. Soon he would be pressing between her legs with that, entering her.

She wondered if she would come. Could come. She certainly felt nothing now. She wasn't aroused.

Kenshin would have known if she was faking it. Shannon had no clue. That made her feel lost somehow. And dirty, somehow, because she could feel the waves of lust rolling off him that didn't match

He slid his hand up under her shirt, and then under her bra, to tweak her nipple between two fingers. Cool night air touched her skin. In response, she moaned, though she still didn't feel anything. But she didn't want him to think he was doing something wrong. She wanted this. She wanted to prove to herself that it didn't matter, that she _could _sleep with a guy and not panic.

And not grieve when he left her. Because Shannon would. She knew he would. Probably for Brandon, if Brandon forgave him.

His free hand -- the one not engaged with rolling her nipple around -- moved down inside her pants. He slid a finger under her underwear. She was wondering what he was going to do with that finger when the awareness of another Immortal washed across her.

She tensed up, and tried to push away. The other Immortal was running towards them -- she could sense anger, and could hear pounding footsteps.

"Shh," he said, into her ear. "Relax. I won't hurt you."

She wanted to shove him away, but he had such a tight grip on her that it would take damaging force to get loose. He'd stopped groping her however, and just hugged her. He rocked back and forth, and said low, "Relax, relax. It's okay. I won't hurt you. Relax. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about last night. I didn't make it good for you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Carrie. Just relax. It'll be better this time, I promise."

He was babbling. And she could still feel his erection, shoved hard against her stomach.

The other Immortal stopped not five feet away. She couldn't believe that Shannon hadn't heard the running feet, or sensed the furious presence of another man. She couldn't see him, but she knew who it was. He must have caught an early flight.

"Shannon," she said, "Shannon!"

"What?" Shannon pulled back to look her in the eyes.

And still, he didn't know they were being watched.

She turned to look, now that his head wasn't in the way.

Kenshin stood there.

In the moonlight, he was ghastly pale. His scar stood out in sharp relief, and his hair hung in his face, hiding his eyes. She couldn't see his expression.

She didn't need to see it.

"Kenshin ..."

Shannon let go of her.

"Kenshin ..." she repeated. Then, suddenly angrily, she said, "You idiot! What did you expect me to do? Did you think I would spend forever weeping in my bed?"

A hint of a breeze brushed his hair back from his eyes. She still couldn't tell what his mood was. His face, ever expressive, was for once absolutely unreadable. Then, without a word, he turned his back to her and walked back towards the parking lot. It was a short walk, perhaps a hundred feet. She stared after him.

He climbed into his pickup truck, and drove away.

"Kenshin!" she cried after him, and then burst into tears. Her knees collapsed and she found herself wailing helplessly on the ground, curling into a broken ball of utter grief.

It hadn't been final -- it hadn't felt real -- until he'd simply walked away from her.


	33. Chapter 33

Sasaki had lost weight, and he was very pale. Kenshin stood in the doorway, studying him, for a long moment. His teacher -- his Watcher -- was sitting up in bed and viewing a game show. Though he didn't exactly look the picture of robust health, he was certainly in better shape than the last time Kenshin had seen him.

Finally, he cleared his throat. Sasaki looked over, and his face lit up. "Himura-san!"

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again!" He was beaming.

Kenshin entered the room. "I'm thinking of leaving town for a bit. I wanted to give you my card."

"Your ... card?"

Kenshin fished in his wallet to retrieve it. "You saved Morgan's life, very nearly at the cost of your own. I owe you a debt. Though -- I confess to being curious how you knew."

"Dall's Watcher told me what was coming down. He was in Garret's employ, as a butler, and overheard."

"Oh." It was a simple explanation, and an obvious one.

"How is the girl doing? Joe said you left her in the charge of your great-grandson."

Kenshin sighed. "She is troubled, but George is a good man. He will be able to help her, more than I, I believe."

"You said you were leaving? Is Carrie going with you?"

Kenshin blew out a short, sharp breath. He was angry -- angrier than he would have believed possible. He had trusted her completely and utterly, and it hurt just as much as if it had been Kaoru he had found in the arms of a boy. "She has chosen another."

"Ouch." To his credit, Sasaki's wince was genuine. "You really loved her."

"Yes." Kenshin said, simply. He blinked slowly, willing himself to not shed tears. When Kaoru had died, he had thought he would never recover from the grief. This was worse. Kaoru's death had been inevitable, and natural. This was deliberate betrayal.

And, to his utter bafflement, just couldn't figure out what he had done wrong ... except leave her, temporarily, to help another. And Carrie was not so selfish as to begrudge him that, surely. Her words to him rang angrily in his ears. She had said, with scorn and anger and grief, "You idiot! What did you expect me to do? Did you think I would spend forever weeping in my bed?"

He'd only been gone two weeks. She had not even been willing to wait two weeks for him. He kept coming back to that fact, and it hurt. Was he worth so little to her? Was she so much more shallow than he'd ever dreamed? He had promised he would return. He kept his word. She had to know this.

And yet, he had found her in the arms of another man. And she had called him an idiot for thinking she would wait for him.

"What are you going to do now?"

Kenshin honestly didn't know the answer to that. He'd used the pretext of leaving to give Sasaki his contact information, but he hadn't thought much about his plans. Finally, he said, "I haven't decided yet."

"Want company if you're going to go wandering again?" Sasaki said, probably only half joking. Kenshin knew the man's job involved following him wherever he went. Short of being openly hostile towards him, or moving to Antartica, Sasaki was going to be part of his life.

"Not particularly." Since he was the first Watcher that Kenshin actually liked, Kenshin was inclined to make sure he stayed around -- but Kenshin wasn't about to admit to that.

Sasaki smiled. "Then why did you give me the card?"

"If you need anything, call me." He owed the man that much, at least.

"You're not returning to class? You could still."

Kenshin hesitated. He did, actually, want a degree. Something normal. Something to distract him. And more importantly, betrayal or not, he had promised to protect Carrie. He was honor-bound to carry that out.

"You're right at the limit of your allowable absences, but I'm sure you'd be a good student the rest of the year." Sasaki said, encouragingly. "You're a pleasure to have in class, aside from the fact it makes my job easier."

Kenshin ignored the joking, but said politely, "When are they letting you out?"

"Tomorrow, probably."

"Call me when they discharge you. I'll give you a lift home." Kenshin smiled brightly, a smile he didn't feel at all.

--

Once upon a time, he probably would have curled into a fetal ball and allowed himself to die -- repeatedly -- of malnutrition and dehydration. His heart was a frozen stone in his chest, and he couldn't seem to think past the overwhelming realization that the one person he trusted most in the world had betrayed him.

__

She is not Kaoru.

Never had that been driven home more than now. He wanted her to be, but Kaoru had been faithful to the point of sainthood. He had _suggested _she leave him, a few times, and she had stayed with him through both the best and worst of times. He had left her, once, and she had tracked him down and convinced him to come home, and they weren't even a couple then. Never had her loyalty to him faltered.

He'd only been away from Carrie for two weeks. And she had betrayed him. When he had promised to return as soon as he was able.

He wanted to give up. Just ... quit. Only his promises to others kept him functioning. And some of those others were here: Danny, Sandy, Brandon, Tammy, Shannon, Richie, Meg. Once, they had been Yahiko, Kenji, Byron, Tomoe, Shinya, Sano, Megumi. People he knew, people he had loved. He couldn't help but think they were here for a reason, and that they might need him. More than pure dumb luck had brought them here, certainly.

It made sense to stay. It was the adult thing to do. He told himself people broke up with girlfriends and stayed in college all the time. He should be no exception.

Kenshin slumped onto one of the picnic benches. He would not admit that he wanted to stay because of her. He wasn't _that _masochistic. Once betrayed ... well, he wouldn't let her hurt him this way again. Even if, secretly, he didn't want to leave because ...

"Hey."

Brandon was hitching himself across the grass. He leaned on his canes and regarded Kenshin thoughtfully for a moment. Kenshin didn't say a word. He didn't trust himself to speak.

"Welcome back," Brandon said, finally. "Though I hear tell that your welcoming party last night was a little less friendly."

"Who told you about that?" Oh, gods, there was gossip. Maybe he would leave. It sounded as if the word was already out.

"Carrie was bawling her eyes out this morning."

He grunted.

"You're a piece of work, you know that?"

And with that cryptically angry statement, Byron hitched himself off towards the dorm.

Kenshin sighed. There was gossip, and apparently, the gossip was slanting towards Carrie. He wondered what they were saying about him. Surely, Carrie was admitting to the truth, but he knew that as the juicy tale was passed from person to person, the facts would grow increasingly more distorted.

It hurt. He wanted to run after Byron and explain that he wasn't the guilty party, that he hadn't done anything wrong, but he knew his odds -- at this point -- of being believed were probably pretty low. People tended to side with the girl, and it _did _look bad. He'd told her he didn't know when he was returning. He could have been gone for months, or even years.

And as Atsuko had pointed out to him, he _had _been in the wrong in that he'd refused to even tell Carrie where he was going after Morgan had talked to the cops. She had said, "She's also a grownup, Ken. You made a decision for her, as if she were a child."

Was that it? Had she turned her back on him because he had erred in respecting her nascent maturity? She was an adult, yes, but she was also headstrong and foolhardy. It would take years for her to gain wisdom to temper her impulsiveness. He simply had not wanted to take a risk of her blundering into the middle of a fight and getting killed.

But he should have given her more respect.

If he had asked her for her word to stay in Seacouver, would she have kept it?

He honestly didn't know. He thought that they had a much more significant, albeit mostly unspoken, understanding between them that they were a _couple_. And she had thrown that in his face, and betrayed him. Promising to stay in Canada and then following him would be far less of a crime than cheating on him.

Had he hurt her so badly by treating her like a child, that she had reacted by being unfaithful?

Perhaps.

It just felt ... out of character.

With a heavy sigh, Kenshin picked up his bags and headed for his room.

At least it was Shinya -- Shannon, now. Kenshin suspected there was no future in that relationship, but at a minimum Shannon was kind, and respectful, and would treat her well. When they broke up someday he could see what happened then ...

No.

He could never trust her again. And trust was the most important thing in the world to him. He would rather be single than wonder whose pants his girlfriend was getting into besides his own.

Upstairs, Sandy was at his desk, drawing. He grunted, "Hello," without looking up. It wasn't exactly a friendly hello.

Kenshin glanced at the tablet Sandy was working on. He had a box of markers, and was inking in a picture of a woman. The woman was tall, very blond, and dressed in a spandex uniform. Kenshin realized it was a comic book panel ... and the woman's face was that of Jessica Marshall.

"Who's she modeled on?" Kenshin asked, curious despite his miserable mood. Was Jessica here? Or was the choice of a heroine based simply on subliminal memories of a past life? If so, what superpowers had he given Jessica?

Sandy snapped the tablet shut. "I'm not talking to you."

"I suspect you've heard some bad rumors," Kenshin said, carefully. He'd have to quiz him about his comic book later. "The truth might be a little different."

"Heard the rumors right from the horse's mouth." Sandy rose. "You're a jerk."

"Sandy ..."

"I'm going out." Sandy rose, grabbed his coat, and walked out the door. Kenshin thought that Sandy and Byron handled arguments pretty much the same way. They had in the past life, too. They said their piece, expressed their disgust, then departed before the dispute could escalate. Unfortunately, that made it rather hard to defend oneself.

Once upon a time, he and Kaoru had adopted Sandy in that past life. He wondered if part of Sandy's reaction was due to past memories. Kenji had, more than once, sided strongly with his mother when minor marital disputes had turned into family fights. Perhaps there was no surprise that he had no sympathy nor understanding from this boy.

_At least it's Shannon she's bedding and not Sandy, _Kenshin thought, with very black humor.

He hung his overcoat in the closet, put his sword under the bed, sat down on the bed, closed his eyes, and contemplated not moving for several hours. Or maybe forever. _Giving up _was still an option.

But not a good option.

__

I can handle their dislike of me. People didn't much care for the Battousai, either. At least they're just pissed at me, not scared shitless of me and full of blackest hate.

When he felt the wash of another Immortal's presence, and then a knock, he seriously considered not answering. It was Carrie. But then he summoned his dignity, and told himself that he would continue to treat her with respect, and opened the door.

She had her microwave oven in her arms. Atop it, there was her TV. She said without any sort of preamble, "I'll get the printer in a second. I'm keeping the laptop until I can get the money to replace it -- I need it for class."

He stared at her, for a long, stupid moment. Why was she ... oh, he'd bought her that stuff. What, was she returning it to him because she felt guilty? "You can keep your things, Carrie. I don't want them."

"Yeah, well, there are girls who'd keep the expensive gifts and gloat, but me, I just feel like a whore when I look at them." She flung both the microwave and the TV down. They went crunch. The microwave bounced and then put a dent in the wall.

"Carrie-dono!" He shouted, loud enough to echo. In Japanese, he continued, "What has gotten into you?"

"Oh, don't Carrie-dono me." She drew her fist back, like she was about to hit him.

"Why are you mad at this one?" He said, staring at her. She was angry -- hurt, yes, but also angry. Why was she angry? It made no sense. Confused now, he asked, "Did this one do something to make you angry?"

She did throw a punch, then, and he saw the power behind that blow and ducked and then stepped quickly out of range. It was one thing to be conked on the head, but that had been a serious attack -- she would have broken his nose if it had landed. She stood there, fist pulled back again, breathing hard. Then, in English, she snarled, "You idiot! You god-damned angel-faced _idiot_. Only you could ask that question, in that tone of voice, and make it almost sound like you're the victim here!"

Doors were opening. People staring.

She burst into tears and ran.

"Carrie, wait!" He started to go after her. But then, suddenly, Sandy was in front of him, and Danny, and Shannon. And Brandon, ten feet behind the others, but looking determined to help as well. By the looks of anger on their faces, the only way he could pursue Carrie would be to go through them -- and they would try to physically stop them.

He said quietly, "I do not know what has happened here, but I fear that there has been some grave mischief. I have done nothing to harm Carrie and yet she is acting as if I have betrayed her. I am the one who has been betrayed."

He turned then, because he did not want to fight them, and made a strategic retreat. Something was very wrong.

--

He spent the night in a hotel. He didn't really want to talk to anyone. He needed to think -- but his thoughts were in a whirl, and he had no more clue what to do in the morning than he had the night before.

The obvious answer was to meet with Carrie and ask simple and direct questions to find out why she was so furious at him. However, when he called her she didn't answer, and he found she'd blocked his text messages. He sent her an e-mail asking, simply, "What did I do to offend you so badly?"

Was a guilty conscience making her react in anger towards him? Or was it something more?

Something was wrong. He just didn't know what.

Atsuko's warning came back to him -- that Carrie was young. Once upon a time, Kaoru might have reacted the same way, if she perceived a terrible enough insult from him. However, the Kaoru he had known decades later ... would have answered the damned phone. Would have talked to him, rather than throwing his gifts back at him and breaking them in the process.

It was childish. She was young, and reacting in childish and immature ways. It made him wonder if he'd made the right decision to become involved with her. Should he have waited ... and perhaps lost her to another? If he had waited, however, she would be wiser to the world, and perhaps more willing to wait.

She had been sheltered, all her life. Kaoru, on the other hand, had been an orphan growing up hungry and alone, working hard for every scrap of food to cross her table. At sixteen, he realized, Kaoru had been a _lot _more world-wise than Carrie was at twenty. He'd never really appreciated that before. He'd known it, but had not understood what it meant.

Atsuko had known. Damn, he wished Atsuko were here now. He would love to hear her opinion on the whole situation.

In the morning, at eight, Sasaki called him and he was grateful for the distraction. He drove to the hospital and helped his sensei and watcher into his truck. Sasaki was a little slow, and far too thin, but seemed ready enough to be discharged.

"Can we go by the school?" Sasaki said. "I want to pick up some papers to grade. And I want to check my e-mail and a few other things."

"You should rest," Kenshin objected.

"I am _bored,_" Sasaki said, very distinctly, "and I want something to do."

Kenshin could understand that. How many times had he pissed off Megumi by doing laundry when he was only half healed from a fight? He turned the truck towards the school, and prayed he wouldn't see Carrie until he'd had time to think things through.

In deference to Sasaki's injuries, Kenshin took a service road across campus that led close to Sasaki's classroom. Then he drove off to park, and walked back. He could fetch the truck again when it was time to leave.

To his dismay, Carrie was talking to Sasaki when he rounded the corner. The man was seated in front of his classroom on a bench, and Carrie, bag slung over her shoulder, was gesticulating angrily in front of him.

"No, he broke up with me!"

Huh? Carrie had to be aware of his approach, but she didn't turn to acknowledge him. She insisted, "He broke up with me!"

"But I didn't."

She turned to face him. "Liar! I don't know why you're doing this to me! I don't! I don't!"

Sasaki reached a hand out and caught her elbow, without rising. He was probably hurting, Kenshin thought. "Carrie, how did he break up with you?"

"He s-sent a message through ICQ."

"Really." Sasaki glanced in Kenshin's direction.

Kenshin knew he'd done no such thing. "I didn't."

"I can prove it!" She slung her bag around and extracted her laptop. After a hot glare in his direction, she popped it open, waited a second for it to boot, then tapped open the program with her finger. Despite her expression, however, he sensed turmoil from her, and uncertainty.

"I didn't send you a message breaking up with you." He said this firmly and clearly. "The thought never crossed my mind."

"Then what's this?" She waved the computer vaguely at him, then thrust it into Sasaki's hands.

Sasaki stared at the screen. One eyebrow slowly rose. "Well. Whoever wrote that knew you well enough to find the words that would hurt most, and be most plausible, but it wasn't Kenshin."

"What?!"

Sasaki sighed. "Carrie, I've read many letters by Kenshin, not to mention graded his homework. The man can't put one written sentence out of two together without an error. And that's true in either English or Japanese."

Carrie stared at her screen for a moment longer. Then she turned it around to show Kenshin. She'd pulled up a history of messages between them.

Kenshin read the messages. They were hard, and hurtful. One in particular stood out, "I thought the age difference between us wouldn't matter, but you're so young. I feel like a dirty old man when I'm with you -- you're like a little girl next to me. I'm not even sure I'm attracted to you."

He lifted his eyes up and met Carrie's gaze over the top of the laptop's monitor. Her eyes were huge, and brimming with tears. "Carrie, this one did not write this. This one loves you. This one is very much attracted to you."

_Mostly_, he thought, though he was unsettled by her behavior in this matter. Hadn't she trusted him enough? Kaoru would have known _instantly _that those were someone else's words, not his.

Suddenly, she spun about, and ran. Kenshin thrust the laptop into Sasaki's hands and this time, he gave chase. "Carrie-dono, wait!"

She was faster, but she was also frantic and panicky and he knew she'd run herself out soon enough. He loped after her efficiently, just keeping her in sight. He found he was calm, though he was thinking frantically as he ran. She'd cheated on him. She hadn't trusted him enough to know those words weren't his, hadn't even questioned the matter. She'd behaved childishly -- throwing herself into the arms of another man, one who definitely didn't love her, because of what -- a fit of pique?

No. She had been desperately hurt, wounded, alone. She'd believed he had abandoned her, had betrayed her. Sleeping with Shannon had been a desperate search for comfort. It wouldn't have been his first choice -- he tended to brood and sometimes drink -- but he could understand her mindset.

However, that brought him back to the fact that she had not trusted nor believed in him enough to know he would never break up with her via an instant message. Good god. And that was aside from the fact that Sasaki's critical assessment of his writing skills was dead on. They'd talked via e-mail and ICQ for several years. She knew exactly how bad his written English was.

Finally, Carrie slowed to a walk. They were in the middle of a wooded area. She stood with her back to him and said in a choked, breathless voice, "Stop. Stop chasing me."

"Carrie-dono ..."

"I screwed up. Unforgivably."

"Carrie ..." He took a step closer.

She spun to face him, fist upraised. "Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!"

"Carrie-dono ..." Another step.

"Go away. Just go away. It'll be easier if you just _go away_. I know what you must be thinking. I thought you betrayed me, and I was the one ... just go away. This isn't forgivable. I can never ..."

Another step. She tried to run, and he caught her arm. She spun back, fist cocked, and he took the blow, though he could have dodged it. Her fist struck his cheekbone hard enough to rock him backwards, and leave what he knew would be an impressive bruise -- albeit temporary.

She stuffed her knuckles in her mouth and stared at him. And hiccupped. Tears streamed freely down her face.

"Carrie."

She was hurting. He could see the pain in her eyes, hear it in her sobs. She was biting her own fist so hard that he could see she was denting the skin over her fingers. Her gaze was fixed on the rising bruise on his cheek.

He still had a grip on her other arm. He pulled her closer, and held his arms up. And then she was sinking into his grasp, and sliding to the ground. And crying and crying like her heart had broken. "You can't forgive me. You can't."

It sounded like she didn't want him too.

"This one was very angry, Carrie," he said, quietly, while he knelt beside her on the leaf-strewn ground, and he rocked her back and forth. "But this one loves you. Unconditionally. And forever. You did not wantonly betray me; you simply lacked faith in me. I ... can forgive that."

It was true, so help him. Despite his mixed feelings, and despite his anger, he just didn't want to lose her.

"I ... I was so stupid."

"I've been stupid in my life too." He smoothed her hair, kissed her forehead. A moment ago, he had been rather furiously angry at her, and was seriously reconsidering his relationship with her. However, the grief in her heart tore through him. He wanted to make it all better, to soothe away that grief, to see her smile again. She was shattered ... and his pain was just as acute, because she hurt.

"Oh, God. Shannon ... you saw ..." she tried to pull away. He squeezed her tight for a moment longer.

"Aa." He stood back up, and held a hand out to her, and helped her up as well after she reluctantly took it. "I need to take Sasaki home. Then we will talk. And in the future, you will trust this one more, ne?"

She gave him an uncertain look. "I don't know if I deserve you now."

"This one," Kenshin said, with a weary sigh, "could tell you all about undeserved forgiveness."

He put his arm around her waist, half a hug, and guided her back towards Sasaki -- who still needed a lift home. Afterwards ... afterwards, they would talk. He was hurt. He couldn't not be hurt by this. It wasn't the fact that she'd slept with another man that rankled so, but rather, that she had not trusted him. But, he resolved, he could _forgive_, and go forward, and, in time, more trust would come.

"Kenshin," she said quietly, "I was so drunk that I don't even remember most of what happened."

He winced. And he repeated, "We will talk, Carrie. And ... this one would very much appreciate it if you will be calm and just talk with this one, not scream and run and hit this one instead."

She bit back a sob. "I hit you!"

"Aa. You did." He wasn't going to give her a free pass on that, either. "We'll talk."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I." He let go of her. They needed to discuss many things. And he wasn't even sure yet what he wanted to tell her.


	34. Chapter 34

"What are you going to do about Carrie?" Sasaki asked, as they drove to the man's apartment -- which was only a mile or so from campus. Kenshin was unsurprised to find that Sasaki had chosen a week-by-week low rent apartment aimed at travelers. His Watcher would be expected to follow him if Kenshin left town, and Kenshin had a long history of frequently changing his residence.

__

Sixteen decades old and I'm still a wanderer, he thought, ruefully. Well, Sasaki had chosen him. Maybe Sasaki liked to travel as well.

Kenshin shot him a sideways look. With a bit of irritation, he asked, "Is that my sensei or my Watcher asking?"

"A friend, asking. I hope." Sasaki sounded mildly annoyed at Kenshin's question.

"I don't know." Kenshin said. And sighed. He liked Sasaki, he really did, but the thought that the man would record all of their interactions put a weird damper on the friendship. He didn't know how MacLeod handled Joe's Watcherness ... well, maybe he could guess. Mac had an outsized ego and probably enjoyed his every action being recorded for posterity. Kenshin could do without that honor, thanks.

Then, because he felt some additional response was needed, and because he really did like Sasaki, he added, "For the record, I would have expected her to trust me more."

That should be obvious from his reactions, anyway. It wasn't like he was giving anything away.

Sasaki didn't ask him anything else about Carrie, and for that, Kenshin was grateful. They drove in silence the rest of the way to Sasaki's apartment. At Sasaki's house, he helped the man inside, and made him lunch with leftovers for dinner, and then excused himself. "I'll be back by tomorrow ... you need groceries."

"I can order takeout," Sasaki protested, "and they're sending a nurse by tomorrow."

Kenshin shrugged. "It is nothing for me to help you. And I'm a good cook."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're worse than a mother hen?" Sasaki gave him a wry smile.

Kenshin treated him to a very fake, very rurouni smile. "That would be an accurate observation for your journals."

Sasaki snorted. "Don't make me laugh, it hurts too much."

Kenshin's smile was a lot more genuine now, though he didn't say anything else. He liked Sasaki, he had concluded, and if he had to have a Watcher, the man might as well be a friend.

Though past history had taught him a thorough mistrust of Sasaki's organization. Ruefully, Kenshin thought, _Ah, Yukio, I can hear you ranting now about this. However, everyone involved then is dead now, and generations gone. You would have valid concerns, but they are based on the past, not the present situation._

He hadn't thought of Yukio in a long time. He wondered why thoughts of his youngest son had suddenly come to the forefront. An omen? Or just the whims of his subconscious mind?

He wondered if he would ever look into the eyes of a stranger and see Yukio looking back? He didn't even know what Yukio's eventual fate had been; they hadn't spoken much after Kaoru died. Kenji had received one letter during the second world war ... and then, years later, Kenshin had realized a large amount of time had gone by without anyone hearing from him. It wasn't unusual for four or five months, or even a year to go by, without a letter ... but when he realized two years had passed without so much as a New Years card to Raeko, Rose or his children ... he'd begun to worry.

He'd sent letters to Yukio's last known addresses in Japan, without a response or a returned envelope. He had visited, and no one remembered one boy remarkable only for fluent command of English. The occasional search over the ensuing years had turned up nothing. He had then assumed Yukio didn't want to be found; decades had passed, however, without a word. It hurt, not knowing his son's fate. And it hurt that Yukio had never been willing to seek them out and mend fences. That was assuming he'd been alive to do so. Kenshin didn't know when, or how, he had died.

Certainly, he was gone now -- he had been a toddler in the late 1800's -- but Kenshin had no idea how, or where, his son had died. He had not stopped hoping that Yukio would contact him, or others in the family, until well into the 1990's, however.

__

I would have forgiven him everything, Kenshin thought. _Everything. If it meant I knew he was safe. If it meant he would have returned to us, part of the family again._

"You okay?" Sasaki asked.

Kenshin blew out a short, sharp sigh. Now he realized why he was thinking of his son. "I just remembered something ... a lesson I learned a long time ago."

"That is?"

Likely, this would end up as notes in Sasaki's journal. Kenshin spoke anyway. He said, "My youngest son and I, we had a falling out. A long time ago. The last time we saw each other, I was very harsh to him, and he said he'd never speak to me again. And he didn't. Ever. I was right in what I said ... but I was wrong to drive him away. He left all of us -- he just _left_. Because of me."

"Yukio did?"

"Aa." He'd even asked Kaoru, in the afterlife, about Yukio's fate. She had simply said she couldn't say, and to ask George. But George had denied all knowledge ... Kenshin wasn't even sure why he should be asking George; Yukio had departed for parts unknown when George had been barely out of knappies. George had no conscious memory of his uncle.

"You're thinking about Carrie."

Kenshin nodded glumly. "I have to mend this, Sasaki. I don't want to lose Carrie the way I lost Yukio."

--

Shannon, hands in his pockets, walked slowly from the gym to the dorm. Carrie had found him there, had taken him aside and rather frantically filled him in on what had happened with Kenshin. She had been crying the entire time.

He honestly didn't know what to think. He felt guilty, though he couldn't exactly figure out what for. He had no reason to doubt Carrie's word, had he? This wasn't his fault. Was it?

A small voice in his heart whispered that he'd trusted Kenshin instinctively from the get-go. That he should have known something was wrong. But ... even people you liked and trusted sometimes broke up with one another. Just because he liked Kenshin, and he liked Carrie, didn't mean they were right for each other.

"Hey! Fag!" Michael's words rang across the grassy expanse between the English building and the cafeteria. The unexpected insult startled Shannon out of his morose thoughts.

Shannon's head shot up, and he looked around for the target of the words. _Probably Brandon, _he thought, steeling himself for a fight -- he'd have to come to the rescue, and he really didn't want to. There was resignation there; if only Brandon would be more _discrete. _He invited the trouble down on his own head most of the time.

Brandon was nowhere in sight. Actually, the only people in view at all were himself, Michael, and Shannon's ... friends. The ones he'd described to Brandon as 'the jocks.' Dimly, he remembered them mocking him a bit at the party. Well, they were like that. He'd been more concerned about Carrie, really, and had already been a bit drunk.

That had been some party. He was still nursing a hangover two days later.

"Yah, you!" Michael waved at Shannon, lips turning up into an awful smile.

Shannon pointed at himself, in disbelief. He wasn't a fag. Okay, well, he liked a certain blond boy, but that was different ... What the hell ...? What was Michael's problem?

"How's your booooooyfriend today!" Michael shouted. The jocks laughed like this was the funniest question ever.

Shocked, he stared at them. Then he shouted back, "Oh, fuck you!"

Given the context, it probably wasn't the brightest of retorts, but he was a little too stunned to think of a proper comeback. Tanner -- that would be the biggest alpha jock of the pack -- chuckled knowingly. "I hear tell you'd like that."

Tanner had a grin on his face like this was the biggest joke ever.

"Who told you that?" Shannon's mouth was dry. He walked closer, appalled. He wasn't ... how could they ... but ... he hadn't invited this. He'd been discrete. He wasn't _ready_.

Michael grinned. "My sister's friend owns a coffee stand and I hear from her you're dating that idiot Brandy."

"His name," Shannon said, coldly, "Is Brandon."

"So you admit it!" Tanner crowed, while Michael whooped with gales of laughter. "Never figured you for a homo."

Michael sneered, however, "Always figured you were overcompensating a bit with all those girls ...!"

Shannon found his fists balling up. He'd always known this was coming, but today? Now? And it still felt like a bitter betrayal. He'd hung with Tanner, had played basketball with him, and they'd lifted weights together and partied together and been part of the gang. He'd enjoyed their company, mostly. His father had certainly approved of them.

"Asshole," he hissed, and turned to walk away.

He never saw the rock. It hit him just above the ear, hard enough to make his vision go dark. He stumbled to his knees, then scrambled back to his feet, and spun around -- in time to get a clod of mud in the face.

"Hey!" Tanner shouted, somewhat to Shannon's surprise. Then he added, "Don't hit the fag, he might cry."

Angrily, wiping dirt from his eyes, Shannon said, "I'm calling the cops. That was assault, you asswipe."

"Aaawwww, don't tell ..." Michael cooed, in a tone that indicated he was a tattle-tale. "Gonna run to mommy now?"

"Hey!" Brandon shouted, as he emerged from the cafeteria. Brandon's appearance was just icing on the cake as far as Shannon was concerned; he didn't want Brandon mixed up in this. But Brandon, lunch hanging in a bag from one hand, hitched himself across the grass towards them. Brandon's eyes met Shannon's. Then Brandon demanded, angrily, "What's going on?"

"Hey, it's your giiiiirlfriend!" Michael gave Shannon a shove. "Kiss-kiss for me ..."

Shannon took a step back. He didn't want to fight them. It was five against one if Tanner and company decided to get involved. And he was afraid Brandon might get hurt. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone in case he needed to call the police.

"Aw, leave him alone, Michael," Brandon said, when he was close enough to talk without shouting. "He's just a friend. He's not gay."

Shannon gave Brandon a sharp look. Brandon was lying ... why?

Brandon shook his head, when Michael started to say something mocking. "Trust me, he's not batting for my team. We're not dating. If you want to hassle me about being homosexual, at least you're being accurate. Shannon's not gay. Look at all the girlfriends he has."

Brandon was defending him. Brandon, who'd said he wouldn't tolerate a secret relationship, was trying to protect him from ridicule. Shannon suddenly was _angry_. He cut Brandon's calm defense off with a sharp gesture. "Brandon, stop it. Don't lie. Not for me. Not over this."

Brandon protested, "You don't need to do this ..."

Shannon just sighed. "Brandon's lying. The truth is, I am ... I am dating him. And I'm not ashamed of it. And I'm not going to lie about it, either."

He knew he was going to get his ass whooped here. But somehow, it felt good to be honest about it. It was a relief, and he felt proud of himself for standing up to them.

Brandon shrugged. He admitted readily to the jocks, "Okay, I'm protecting him."

"Let's get out of here," Shannon said, backing away. He gripped his cell phone in a sweaty, nervous hold.

"Yeah, run like the girly boy you are." Michael grinned.

He wondered why Tanner was hanging back. In the past, he'd seen Tanner join with gleeful enthusiasm in a round of insult-the-fag. Tanner's cronies stood behind their leader, uncertainly. But it was Tanner's expression that caught Shannon's eye; the man was standing there with his jaw set and a hard, almost angry look on his face.

__

He's pissed, Shannon decided, _that I tricked him somehow by not telling him that I was bi._

Well, Tanner would just have to deal with it. He turned to go.

He was several strides away when Michael chucked another fist-sized rock, and it hit not him, but Brandon. Brandon cried out and fell, landing hard in a tangle of limbs and crutches. Shannon whirled, and without any thought whatsoever, launched himself at Michael. "Leave him alone!"

Shannon was furious -- in a cold, angry, _calculating _way. His vision was crystal clear, and he found he was preternaturally calm. As if he'd known what to do all his life, he lashed out with an athletic, sweeping kick with one foot. He caught Michael in the gut with his boot, and Michael went down hard with a grunt.

Tanner laughed in vast amusement, when Shannon spun around to face him. He held his hands up placatingly, obviously not wanting to actually fight. "Easy, Shannon. I didn't throw it. Hey Michael, we forgot to warn you: the girly-boy here can actually fight."

Apparently, Tanner didn't actually like Michael nor see any reason to defend him. There was a difference between a bit of teasing and actual fighting, and they weren't in a mood for a brawl. Shannon, fists balled, waited for Michael to rise for another round -- but Michael scrambled to his feet and declared, "I'm going to sue you!"

Brandon, who was still seated on the ground, wiped the back of his mouth with his hand and then said, "You are a colossal idiot. If I wanted to be a jerk, Michael, I could have you arrested for assault."

"He kicked me ..."

Brandon spat blood. "You threw rocks at both of us. It was self defense. I think we're even."

After Michael had departed -- and he did so under a hail of amused insults from the jocks, who trailed after him, though Tanner kept looking back -- Shannon said, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Brandon spat again. "Bit my lip when I fell, is all."

Shannon offered him a hand up; getting Brandon back to his feet took some effort and a couple moments of time. Brandon's knuckles and elbow were skinned, where he'd fallen on his arm. Shannon then glared after the retreating Michael, and said, "That asswipe never learns."

"No, and he probably never will. -- You didn't have to out yourself, you know."

Shannon sighed. "Oh, screw it. Tanner won't cause any major trouble for me. He's all mouth, I think, and knows where to draw the line. And he completely leads that little pack of boys. Michael's another story, but we know that. Anyway, they knew."

"Still." Brandon shook his head. He pulled one hand out of the grips of his cane and inspected his wrist. The fall had badly bruised his arm; the swelling was already obvious. "I broke my arm in a fall once. Asshole."

Shannon glanced at him, and saw how easily that could happen -- Brandon's arms were confined by the cuffs of the canes. Not only could that lead to a broken arm, but it also likely meant he couldn't easily block a fall with his hands. Compounded with the fact that he wasn't exactly steady on his feet to begin with, this meant he was at a high risk for being badly injured in a tumble.

Shannon bit out, "Michael's a complete asshole. C'mon, let's go get you patched up."

Surprisingly, Brandon didn't argue much. He let Shannon guide him back to the dorm, and upstairs. Shannon dug gauze and ointment out, and then washed the dirt and gravel from Shannon's badly scraped elbow and knuckles. There was gravel deeply buried under the skin of his elbow, and it took tweezers to dig it out. Brandon was silent during this, and startlingly compliant. He barely even flinched.

"You okay?" Shannon was a little bit worried by the lack of argumentative, sarcastic sniping.

"Do ..." Brandon hesitated. He leaned his hip against the bathroom counter and picked at a raw flap of skin on one knuckle.

"Stop that." Shannon swatted his hand.

Brandon sighed. Then he said, "Shannon, why did you admit to them that you're bi?"

Shannon scrutinized Brandon's knuckles. Some of the scrapes were deep. He slathered them with neosporin and then stuck band-aids over them. "I don't think any of these could be stitched up, but you'll want to go by the student health center tomorrow. The last thing you need is an infection."

"I've done worse falling out of trees. -- You didn't answer my question."

"I did earlier," Shannon pointed out. "They already knew. The girl at the coffee bar -- the night Sasaki got shot -- well, Michael knows her. We weren't exactly discrete, I guess."

"Oh." Brandon sounded disappointed.

Shannon added thoughtfully, "But I don't think I'd have denied it."

"Why not?"

"Because ..." Shannon balled his fists up. "Because they made me mad."

Brandon grabbed the washrag from Shannon's hand, and reached out, and dabbed at Shannon's cheek. "You have mud on you."

Shannon snatched the washrag back and took care of his own face, after a quick glance in the mirror. He had mud spackled from his eyebrows to his chin and a growing purple bruise on his temple. While he did this, Brandon leaned against the counter and said thoughtfully, "They make me mad too, you know."

"Yeah." Shannon hesitated. "Did you hear about Carrie?"

"What happened?" Brandon asked.

Shannon led the way back out into his room, where he slumped on the couch. "Kenshin had never broken up with her. Someone -- probably Morgan -- pretended to be him and screwed with her head."

"Oh, ouch."

"Kenshin's back. He knows. He caught us ..." Shannon swallowed hard. "If I'd known. If I'd even suspected it was a scam someone pulled on Carrie ... I didn't mean to, but I really hurt her. I really feel like I took advantage of her."

"Mm." Brandon sat down next to him. "I can't say as I didn't see that coming a mile away."

"You knew ...?"

"Oh, not that Ken hadn't broken up." Brandon picked at the band-aids on his knuckles. "Though I thought it was weird, because he really loves her. I figured there was more to the story. " Brandon gave him a long, sideways look. His blue eyes seemed almost sad. "And you _were _taking advantage of her."

Shannon winced. "She said yes!"

"She was desperately alone." Brandon fixed Shannon with a level, cold look. There was no sympathy in that gaze now, and definitely no pity. "You took advantage of her emotions to -- what, get your rocks off?"

"I guess." Unfortunately, Brandon's assessment was too close for comfort. He said, somewhat defensively, "I was feeling pretty sorry for myself too."

"Over _what_?" Brandon demanded.

"I screwed up with you. I really want ... I want ..." His throat seemed to be closing up. He couldn't even force the words out.

Brandon was silent. Waiting.

"I ... I'm _sorry_."

"For what?" Brandon shrugged. "We're not a couple. If you want to go hang out with a bunch of jocks who don't like me, or if you want to go screw a pretty girl, it's not any of my business."

Shannon would rather have been beat up by said jocks than to hear those casual words. "But ..."

Brandon sighed. "I'm not sure you want the sort of relationship I want. I've watched you with the girls, Shannon. You've got lots of friends with benefits. But it's all casual. You talk about dating me, but I think dating is just a euphemism you might use for having sex."

Shannon stared at him, stunned. How could Brandon have ever have thought that?

"I want a serious relationship with someone." Brandon said, voice clear and distinct. "I've been used one time too many. I'm not going to settle for anything less than a partner. I don't just want the sex, or somebody to hang out with. I want someone I can build a future with."

Shannon closed his eyes. "You wouldn't even give me a chance, then?"

"I've never seen you give any indication that you want something like that." Brandon started to rise.

Shannon reached out, planted a hand on his shoulder, and pulled him back down. "Don't run off, Shannon. Please."

Brandon folded his arms. The bruise on his right forearm was livid against his pale skin: shades of purple and red and blue. He stared straight ahead, not looking at Shannon at all.

Shannon took a deep breath. "I've never really thought about it. I mean -- I've thought about a family someday. My father always talks about a wife, and grandkids for him. I always figured I'd do that. But it wasn't my dream, or something I wanted for myself. It was just what I was supposed to do with my life. Find a wife, have kids. I figured if I looked hard enough, someday, I'd find a woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with but it was sort've ... abstract."

Brandon didn't say a word.

"I didn't realize that you wanted ... long term ... I guess." Shannon glanced sideways at him. He saw Brandon's adam's apple bob as the other man swallowed hard, but Brandon was saying very little. "I ... I can see that, with you. It's not abstract."

He trailed off, contemplating the idea of having Brandon as a _partner _in his life. Not just dating Brandon, but planning for a life together after college. It was weird. He'd never really thought about it. But the idea of knowing that Brandon would be there tomorrow, and the next day, and for the rest of his life -- it did appeal. It was a comfortable feeling, as if he'd come home.

It also scared him to death. Because with that life came responsibility, not just for himself, but to someone else. He wasn't sure he was ready.

On the other hand, if he didn't chose now, he might never have the chance again with Brandon. And a life with a different guy was about as remote a thought as a life with a woman. But with Brandon ... with Brandon, it felt _real_. Like something that could happen.

"Brandon, I might ..." He chose his words carefully. "I might be interested, in something like that, but you've got to give me a chance."

"When you're seriously interested in me," Brandon responded, cautiously, "you'll stop dating other people. And you won't hang out with people who are nasty towards me. I don't mean we can't each have our own friends, but if your friends are trashing me, and you stay buddy-buddy with them, I don't think that's right."

"Okay." He agreed to this without hesitation.

"You're serious." Brandon stared at him incredulously. "I wasn't asking for you to go steady with me _now_."

"I ..." Shannon swallowed hard. "Brandon, I would give _anything _to have one more chance to try to make this work between us. I screwed up big time and I know it."

"Oh."

"You thought ..." Shannon met Brandon's very blue eyes. "You thought I wasn't that interested, right? Well, I _am_. Damnit, Brandon. Just give me a chance."

"I ever catch you with another person, it's over." Brandon still sounded wary.

"I know that happened to you in the past, but I'd never do anything like that." Shannon remembered the raw pain in Brandon's voice when he'd told about a high school boyfriend who'd cheated on him. He took a deep breath, and said as calmly as he could, "I'm a complete idiot, sometimes, but I'm an honest idiot. I'll never, ever lie to you."

"I really didn't think you were interested in a ... commitment." Brandon ran a hand through his blond curls. "Ever."

"Yeah, well, you misjudged me. There's been a lot of that going around. So are you going to take a chance on me now, or not?"

__

Please say yes, he thought, with a sort of desperate lonely longing.

"Okay." Brandon was blinking very rapidly.

"Thank you." Shannon exhaled slowly. He felt like he'd just won the lottery, only better. He wasn't sure why he'd been so scared that Brandon would say no ... but the relief at Brandon's _okay _was fierce.

Brandon shifted on the couch, and Shannon thought that he was going to get up. However, he simply twisted around so that he was facing Shannon -- and then he put his hand on Shannon's shoulder and leaned in and kissed him.

It was a tender kiss, very unlike the kisses they'd shared before.

Brandon pulled back, after a moment, and met Shannon's gaze. "Do you really ... want me ... like that? As a partner?"

"Oh, yes." Shannon suddenly had no doubts at all. "Oh, very much."

--

Kenshin felt every one of his sixteen decades with a sort of painful emotional weight as he walked back to his dorm room. He honestly didn't know what to do, or what he wanted.

Part of him -- the same part of his soul that had died when he had thought Kaoru had been killed by Enishi -- was screaming that this was Kaoru and that he was responsible for her, and that he could not be contemplating truly breaking it off. However, the part of his soul that was sixteen centuries old, that had seen and loved before, and which had been battered and abused by time, was frankly not inclined to trust _Carrie _again. At least, not any time soon.

__

Ah, Atsuko. You knew. You knew she was too young. You knew we were rushing things. He missed Atsuko's cynicism. Atsuko would have reacted to something like Morgan's little prank with gales of laughter and a quick phone call to his cell phone. "Hey loverboy," he could imagine her saying, "you know you just broke up with me? Do me a favor and tell Richie I'm available, will you?"

He couldn't -- exactly -- blame Carrie for her reaction, and her gullibility. It was simply reflective of who she was at this point in her life. But he didn't have to like it.

On the other hand, he didn't want to lose her.

At the top of the stairs, he turned and saw Sandy in the hall -- and Michael, and a football player named Tanner who was in Kenshin's English class on the other side of both of them. And then he saw Sandy deliver a roundhouse punch to Michael's nose. Michael stumbled backwards, and somewhat to Kenshin's private amusement, burst into tears.

Sandy rounded on Tanner and said, in an aggressively questioning tone, "You too?"

Tanner held his hands up. "He had that coming. I'm not that stupid. Or that bigoted."

"Yeah. Touch my brother again and I'll kick your ass." Sandy had his fists balled. Michael, hand clapped over his bleeding nose, stumbled away down the hall.

Tanner stepped aside to let him pass. "Shannon go this way?"

"He's in his room, I think." Sandy sounded suspicious.

"Good. I want to talk to him."

Tanner brushed past Kenshin. Kenshin lifted an eyebrow at Sandy. Sandy said, "I really hate that asshole Michael."

"You were defending Brandon?"

"Yeah."

"Good on you." Kenshin hoped nothing would come of it. In his day -- and in Sandy's past life -- such an exchange was almost expected. If someone messed with your family, particularly a disabled brother who really couldn't effectively defend himself, you messed right back. Now, Sandy could theoretically get arrested. Well, they'd cross that bridge if they had to.

--

Somewhere between the bed and the couch, Brandon had shed his braces. He was taller than Shannon by a good three or four inches, and heavy enough to leave no doubt in Brandon's subconscious mind that this was a _guy _who was sprawled across his chest and kissing him. And Brandon had arms and shoulders like a bodybuilder, too.

They were both bare chested; Shannon had realized that Brandon shaved his chest because there was the barest hint of stubble. He wasn't entirely sure what to think about that, other than to realize he wasn't all that _surprised_.

However, at the moment, he was pretty distracted. Brandon had deftly unbuttoned Shannon's fly and he had one hand ... down there ... and the man's long, nimble fingers were proving to be rather skilled.

Then someone knocked on the door. Loudly.

"Damnit, I'm on duty." Shannon said, after glancing at the clock. His evening shift babysitting the dorm had just started, and he couldn't really ignore the knock. Which was frustrating, because he was pretty sure that Brandon had going all the way in mind. And he was all for that.

Brandon rolled over, then shoved himself upright. He glanced significantly at the bathroom. "Should I make myself scarce?"

Shannon considered the logistics of getting Brandon, sans his braces, into the bathroom. He'd have to support him, or possibly carry him -- he realized he didn't know how mobile Brandon really was without them. Besides, he didn't really care if people knew. Not anymore.

He shook his head. "Sit tight. I'll try to take care of this quick."

Brandon flopped back onto the bed, laced his fingers together behind his head, and said, with a wink, "You better."

The person outside knocked again.

Shannon shouted, "Just a minute!" After buttoning himself back up, he padded barefoot and bare chested to the door and reluctantly opened it.

Tanner stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He blurted out, "I'm sorry about Michael. He's an ass."

Shannon blinked. He hadn't been expecting an apology. Harassment and a beating, yes.

"Mind, your, umm ..." Tanner turned an interesting shade of pink, "... your, umm ..."

"Boyfriend?" Shannon suggested, brightly, and with some amusement. He'd hung out with Tanner and the other jocks for a few years, and knew damn well the man could be incredibly crass, crude and insulting when the topic of either girls or gays came up. It struck him as somehow hilarious that the guy was at a loss for words now that he was trying to be polite.

"Boyfriend. Right." Tanner was turning even redder. "Brandy -- Brandon's -- an idiot. Half the harassment he gets, it's his own doing. He _provokes _people. Deliberately. But you're okay, and I shouldn't have egged Michael on. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for either of you to get hurt."

"Awwww ..." Brandon said, from behind Shannon, sitting up again on the bed, "... that's so _sweet _Tanner. Why don't you tell Shannon about the time you suggested I put on a skirt and suck your dick?"

Tanner went from red to white. "Actually," he said, "he made a kissy face at me, so I told him he could ... if he wore a skirt ... said he was enough of a girl already ..."

Shannon found he was rubbing the bridge of his nose. His head was starting to hurt. He could _totally _see that scene, and hear both of them. Brandon would have been lisping and flipping his hand around and "acting gay" and Tanner would have been defensive and angry.

Tanner said, low, "If I ... if I say I'm sorry ... can we still ... I mean, I like you, Shannon. Not _that _way, but you're cool. Can we hang? Still?"

Shannon hesitated. He sighed, finally, and said, "We're cool."

"He's an _ass_!" Came from behind him, strident and all sorts of angry.

Shannon grimaced. This was drama he just didn't need. "But I think you need to apologize to Brandon."

"Umm." Tanner hesitated.

"He's my boyfriend." Shannon said that firmly. "Either you be nice to him, or we're not friends."

"He's a jerk, Shannon. He won't do it." Brandon appeared to be putting his braces back on, when Shannon looked over his shoulder. "He's just another bully like Michael."

"I'm not a bully!" Tanner had his fists balled. He brushed past Shannon, stopped in the middle of Shannon's room, and addressed Brandon. "I'm sorry I've been mean to you. I know you take it personally sometimes. I'm _sorry_."

Shannon said, "Thank you."

Brandon's glare softened a bit. "If you're really sorry, you'll have to prove it."

Tanner shuffled in place. He was turning red again, and shifting from one foot to the other while shooting covert glances at Brandon, at Shannon, and at the bed. "Shannon. What I like about you. You're loyal. You expect the best of your friends. Most of the guys I hang with, they're not. This -- with Brandon, you stuck up for him. When you didn't have to. He was trying to cover for you and you wouldn't let him. Maybe I've been an ass in the past, but I hope we can stay friends. You made me think, you're a good guy and I've been saying rude things that apply to you, and you're a friend, and I never even knew. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to listen to it."

"Awww, big handsome jock wanna hug?" Brandon purred.

Shannon shot Brandon a dirty look. Before Tanner could think of something to say -- and he was standing there with his mouth open -- Shannon said with some irritation, "Brandon, that was _rude_. You know what you said about my friends needing to be nice to you? I think that applies to you being nice to my friends, too."

Both Brandon and Tanner shut their mouths, simultaneously. After a moment, somewhat grudgingly, Brandon said, "Sorry."

"_Thank _you." Shannon reached out and wrapped his arms around Brandon's shoulders and gave him a one-handed hug. He thought for a moment that Brandon would shove him away, but then Brandon sighed and leaned against Shannon's hip.

"I'm sorry." Brandon repeated, in a muffled tone of voice.

Tanner was nervously shuffling again, and averting his eyes from them. Shannon took pity on him and said, "I'll catch you tomorrow. Brandon and I were having, umm, some quality time."

Tanner dang near ran out of the room. He was gone so fast that he didn't even say goodbye, he just _bolted_.

After the door shut after him, Brandon said crossly, "I don't like that guy. He's been a _jerk _to me."

Shannon sat down next to Brandon. "You've been a jerk right back. So you're even. Shannon, Tanner's ... actually, I'm astonished he didn't turn on me. I figured he would. It says a lot, about him, that he _didn't_, because I bet I'm the butt of a lot of jokes right now among his buddies."

"Yeah, well."

Shannon put his arm around Brandon's shoulders. "He's not perfect. But if he wants to ... if he still wants to be friends with me, maybe he can change."

Brandon sighed. "He's a lot less likely to change if I snark at him every time I see him, is what you're saying without saying it, right?"

"Uh-huh." Shannon flopped backwards onto the bed and pulled Brandon down with him. "Pretty much. Be nice. He might surprise you."

"Or he might lynch both of us in a dark alley somewhere."

Shannon pinned Brandon down and kissed him thoroughly. Then, when he came up for air, he said in a low, sultry voice, "Don't worry. I'll defend you from the big bad football player."

Brandon started giggling, which Shannon decided was a total turn-on.

--

Kenshin let Carrie come to him; he knew she would, eventually, when she was calmer. Talking to her when she was hysterically upset was not going to help either of them.

That evening, as he had expected, she approached him in the hall. "Kenshin!"

"Aa?"

She said in Japanese, "Can we talk?"

"I'm going to the gym." He had his duffel slung over his shoulder. "Walk with me."

"Ummm." She hesitated. "Over dinner or something?"

"Maybe later. Walk with me now." He was pretty sure he wouldn't taste the food if he tried to have a private dinner with her.

"Are you mad?" She asked, when they were outside, and nobody else was within earshot. "Are you mad at me?"

"I said I forgave you."

"That's not an answer."

"I'm hurt." He examined his feelings, trying to find words to express himself. Her betrayal -- and it still felt like a betrayal -- felt like a raw, weeping wound inside him. "I am not angry, precisely. Disappointed, perhaps."

"In me."

"My expectations were too high, I suppose." He shoved his thumbs in his pockets. "You're young, and you scarcely know me. Kaoru knew me for two years before I proposed to her."

"I hate it when you do that."

"What?"

"The _'you're young' _bit. I'm not _stupid_, Kenshin. Except I was. You should blame me, and it was being stupid, not being young."

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

"No?" She glanced sideways at him. "Are you going to break up with me now?"

"I said I forgave you."

"But." She shook her head. "There's a _but _there that you're not saying."

"I love you, Carrie." Kenshin exhaled slowly, willing the anger away. "If you had done this deliberately, maliciously, out of pique, or for revenge because I left you behind -- then I would not be able to forgive. But this ... this is not unforgivable. I've said that before. But you must also forgive yourself."

"I let you down."

"Aah." He agreed with that, then watched as she flinched, and felt guilty for it. "Will you trust me more in the future?"

"Yes." She said, in a very small voice. "Oh, _yes_. Kenshin -- I don't want to lose you. I don't ever want to _lose _you."

Somehow, the weariness that had been soaking through his very bones since this morning eased. He said simply, "On that point, I agree. I do not want to lose you, Carrie. I may be a foolish old man, but ... I love you. And I am scared that this could lead to my losing you. I do not want that."

"Kenshin ... you didn't tell me where you were going because you didn't trust me, right?" Carrie's words surprised him. "You didn't trust my _judgment. _Kaoru used to follow you when you told her not to. Was she ever wrong, though, when she did follow you?"

He thought about that. Kaoru's habit of ignoring his advice had put her in deadly danger more than once. It had complicated his life, and made his battles more difficult. However, in the end, it had always turned out for the best. Instead of answering her, he said, "I didn't want you to put your education before me."

"Screw school. It's not more important than you are. I'm Immortal; I can get a degree sometime in the next thousand years. You are _way _more important than a sheepskin." She sounded pissed, now. Her blue eyes flashed a warning that this was dangerous ground.

He shook his head. "Carrie, I've been traveling around the world for the last sixteen decades. I will be fine without you ..."

Kenshin realized his mistake as soon as he said it, but he couldn't take back the words. Carrie rounded on him, fist upraised, "You _idiot_. You arrogant ..."

She tried to hit him.

Kenshin blocked the blow, catching her wrist in one callused hand. She tried to twist free, and he wouldn't let go. He stepped closer to her, glared up at her, and snapped, "You're right. I was arrogant to make that decision for you. You're also right that, most of the time, Kaoru was correct in following me. But you are _not _right when you _hit _me."

She stepped backwards, and he let her go. He was mad now. He wasn't sure when he'd lost patience with being struck by Carrie -- or Kaoru, before her. But he just simply didn't want to put up with it anymore.

"You do not have the _right _to hit me when you're angry, that you don't." He glared at her. "Neither of us has been very respectful of the other, I'd say."

"Sorry." She rubbed her wrist where he'd grabbed it. "Kenshin ... I'm sorry."

"Aa. Me too." He felt himself soften. "Neither of us is perfect."

She took a deep breath, and said, "I ... I really want to work things out between us. It's going to take some effort, isn't it?"

"Aa." He paused, and considered the problem, then added, "But you're worth it."

She had tears streaming down her face, but now she smiled. And she whispered, "Thank you."

And somehow, he knew things would be okay between them, eventually. Not right away, but they could make this work, and it would be worthwhile.


	35. Chapter 35

It was cold and blustery, though not yet snowing, when Kenshin pulled the rental SUV up in front of the manor house. The skies -- both grey from inclement weather and growing dark with the onset of night -- gave the place a sort of gothic air.

The Marshall house was, for the most part, a happy place for Kenshin. Particularly during the holidays, and it was only a week until Christmas. Though not a Christian, Kenshin adored the spirit of this holiday -- it was a time to meet with family, give gifts, and, in this case, go on an extended vacation with Carrie.

He slid a hand into his pocket. The little box that contained his Christmas gift to Carrie was velvety to the touch and warmed by his body heat. Still, despite what should have been a very good mood, he found himself frowning in response to the gloomy atmosphere. He told himself firmly it was just an illusion, and not an omen.

After parking, he unloaded both his bags and Carrie's from the back of the vehicle and then walked up to the front door thus laden. The door wasn't locked; when nobody answered their knock, at his direction, Carrie grabbed it and held it open for him to follow. Once upon a time, there would have been servants here, but they were long gone -- still, it felt weird to let themselves in.

Inside the door, there was a Christmas tree in the foyer, though it wasn't decorated yet. The air was chilly, and he could hear the asthmatic old boiler in the basement wheezing and gurgling away.

"George! Morgan! We're here!" Carrie shouted.

"Shhh!" he warned, but too late.

From upstairs came the wail of a new baby.

"Damnit!" Morgan's voice came from upstairs. "You woke her!"

"Sorry!" Carrie winced. To Kenshin, she said, "I didn't know the baby was sleeping. Did you ... sense ... that?"

He shook his head. Infants at that age hadn't developed anything approaching a ki that he could read. He could sense them, but there was no aggression, no anger, no _focus_. "Just guessed, that I did."

It was five PM. For a month old baby, it was an easy guess that the child might be asleep if the house was dead silent and dark. Particularly since George had related that this was a particularly cranky baby, and one who was giving Morgan quite a crash course in parenting.

They climbed the stairs. Kenshin glanced down at the steps, noting the oak was worn from a century of use. He remembered his own children, and their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and on through the generations, running up and down this staircase. George had broken his arm and spent a miserable summer in a cast when he'd tripped off the second landing -- if Kenshin recalled correctly, George had been seven. It had been 1934, a year after he'd returned from Japan.

__

Returned without Kaoru, Kenshin recalled. George had meant more to him than perhaps anyone knew. _Kaoru dead. Yukio gone. All the rest of my children grown, with grandchildren of their own. I didn't think I mattered anymore ... but one little boy who liked to play chess and go, ride horses, and build forts and read proved me wrong._

He glanced over at Carrie. She met his eyes and said, "Am I supposed to have a sense of deja vu here?"

"Do you?"

"Mmm." That was an answer in the affirmative, though a bit hesitant.

"I'm not surprised." They'd reached the landing halfway to the second story. He suddenly caught her arm, pulled her around, threw his arms around her neck, and kissed her.

She returned the kiss with pleasure, but then pulled back and said, "What was that for?"

Low, because he could sense Morgan coming down the hall above them, he said, "For being here. For coming. I know you don't want to speak to Morgan, and I know you miss your parents, but I'm very glad you came with me for Christmas here, that I am."

She hugged him. "I knew you wanted this."

Morgan was waiting at the top of the stairs, her infant in her arms.

"Hello, Morgan," Kenshin said, as he set their suitcases down.

Morgan smiled shyly at him, and hugged her baby close. "Gramps is asleep."

"Sorry about waking your baby," Carrie said, an automatic apology.

Morgan's smile faded away, and she looked down at her feet. "She doesn't sleep for long anyway."

Morgan looked exhausted, Kenshin thought. There were deep circles under her eyes, and when she stopped smiling, her expression was distant, and unfocused. It also didn't appear like she'd had a shower in the last day, or possibly two. Kenshin said knowingly, "Then mama doesn't get to sleep for very long either, yes?"

She sighed. "I don't think I've gotten more than two hours a night in the last month. Nicky cries _all _the time."

"George said you've been having a bit of trouble with colic." Kenshin nodded.

"A bit." She exhaled raggedly.

Kenshin held his arms out and she willing passed the child over. She almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Well, Kenshin figured she'd been carrying around several pounds of infant in her arms for a month. The physical toll alone was significant. He didn't think George was up to the task of baby-lugging to help her.

It had been a long time since Kenshin had held a baby this small. Unfocused blue eyes stared up at him, and the infant waved her two small fists for a moment. He smelled baby powder and soap and that indefinable new-baby smell. Then the child scrunched his face up and started to experimentally cry.

"I know, I'm not-the-mama," Kenshin said, with a smile. But he shifted his hold on the baby, cradling her to his shoulder, hugging firmly, and swaying gently in place. After a moment, the hiccupping sobs stopped. Kenshin patted the baby on the back and said to Morgan, "She's a doll."

She beamed proudly.

Carrie peered over Kenshin's shoulder, and Kenshin turned to offer her the child. She backed up so quickly she nearly tripped over their luggage. "I don't know anything about babies."

"Well," Morgan said, with a roll of her eyes, "I can tell you the basics in three sentences. They eat, cry, and poop. When they cry, you feed them or you wipe their butts, and sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn't. And don't expect to sleep at night if you have one."

Kenshin tickled the baby's cheeks with his finger and peered into her eyes. He was rewarded with a smile. "I love babies," he said, "they're innocent."

"Try owning one." She held her arms out to claim the baby back.

Kenshin passed the child to her, and said with a smile, "I have. I miss it."

__

Yukio, he thought, fondly. Yukio had been a toddler, not a newborn, but he still remembered the visceral joy of carrying a small child that was _his _in a sling on his back. Of cuddling his son, and playing with him, and watching him grow and discover the world. He missed that.

Morgan offered, "Do you want to hold her?" to Carrie.

Carrie said, with some considerable wariness, "Not really."

And Kenshin was pretty sure he wasn't imagining the hostility that vibrated between the two. Well, he understood where it was coming from. Things needed to be addressed. Just -- not now. Later, when the time was right.

--

George woke from his nap an hour later, as Kenshin and Carrie were unpacking their suitcases. He knocked on the open door's frame. "Hey, gramps."

Kenshin turned around, and grinned. "Hello, Georgie-kun."

It had been three months since he'd seen George last. George looked smaller, thinner, but somehow more alert. When they'd parted, his great-grandson had been notably unsteady on his feet. He was almost ninety years old and Kenshin had been expecting a steady decline. However, George looked good; thin, but alert and agile.

__

He is too skinny, Kenshin thought, critically. He had thought George underweight before, but now the man was beyond gaunt, with translucent skin stretched tautly over knobby bones.

"Hello, Mr. Trevor," Carrie said, with a smile.

"It's Viscount Trevor," George said, crossly. "Don't you Americans know _anything_?"

"S... sorry!" Carrie stammered, eyes widening.

Kenshin hid a smile behind his hand. George was legally entitled to claim the title, but generally didn't -- unless he was teasing a pretty young American girl.

"But call me George." George stepped into the room. "Figure it's okay, since you're also my great-gramma and all."

She giggled, a little uncertainly. Kenshin, no longer bothering to conceal his grin, folded George into a hug, squeezing him tight.

"So you're the girl that has gramps blushing like a schoolboy." George nodded happily. "I can see why. She's a pretty 'un, Ken-nii. Really grew up since the last time I saw her."

Kenshin blushed, much to his annoyance. George cackled with good humor. Carrie's eyes narrowed; Kenshin could tell that she was wavering between irritation and amusement.

He said, with a smile, "George, it is good to see you."

"It is." George agreed, gravely. "Sorry about your room being a mess. Morgan's got her hands full with that little one. We thought it would be done by Christmas, but I'm afraid she hasn't had time."

He usually stayed in the room closest to the stairs; habit, that, protecting the others. He'd discovered that the room was a mess, however, piled high with boxes of Christmas decorations pulled down from the attic and assorted clutter. Given it was next to the stairs, that made a sort of sense. They'd stowed everything there for convenience.

"It's okay." Kenshin glanced around the room they were standing in. "This was Kaoru's room, a century ago. There are good memories, here. I spent more nights in this room than in my own -- I used to sneak across on the ledge, outside, after the servants were in bed."

George cackled. "Byron used to say that one of the requirements of being a servant here was the ability to be selectively blind and deaf, yes?"

"Well, that, too." Kenshin nodded agreement. He'd often wondered what the servants had thought of him.

"Face it, old man, you just liked the drama of entering via the window." George was in fine form. And he was also right.

"Well, that, and it was easier. I didn't have to worry about waking anyone with creaking doors and floorboards." Kenshin grinned, willing to concede George's point.

Carrie raised both eyebrows. "Only you, Kenshin, would call walking along a six inch wide ledge on the second story of a building _easier _than opening a bedroom door."

--

Later, downstairs, George bustled about the kitchen. "Coffee, Ken-nii?"

"Tea is fine." It would be dark tea, made palatable only by sweetening with sugar and cream, but Kenshin didn't want to make George do any extra work. He knew from experience that George wouldn't have green. The man always forgot.

He sat down at the kitchen table, where a mass of Christmas lights roughly the size of a bushel basket spilled across the worn wood. Snarled tendrils of lights trailed off to the floor, and there was a box of replacement bulbs as well. A half dozen detangled strings of lights were neatly coiled on a chair.

George gave him a look. "You hate black tea and I forgot to pick up anything for you."

"Never have figured out why a man who drinks his coffee black hates black tea," Carrie said.

"It is _not _the same thing," Kenshin shook his head. He spotted a plug in the mass of lights and began pulling out the attached wires. "I will drink your tea, George."

"Nonsense." George dumped several spoonfuls of coffee grounds into a percolator. He lit two burners on the ancient gas stove with a match, then set a kettle on one and the percolator on the other. Then he opened a cabinet and produced a fruitcake, which he offered to them.

Carrie eyed the moist, sticky fruitcake dubiously, but Kenshin recognized the recipe. It was an old family dessert; he remembered Jessica's mother making it, over a century ago. "I'm not sure Carrie's _old _enough to eat that," he said, a bit teasingly.

"Huh?" She gave him a suspicious look.

He returned it with a completely innocent, "Oro?"

"Ah, it's Christmas," George said, with a cackle. "Let her imbibe."

Kenshin paused from Christmas-light wrangling to cut slices for the three of them, and Carrie's eyebrows went up after the first cautious bite. "About how much alcohol is in this?"

"Most of a bottle of good brandy," George said, grinning. He licked icing from the dull knife that Kenshin had used to cut the cake, then deposited it in the sink. "Good, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed. "Though, umm, I think I'll limit it to one slice."

One of the things he'd done with Carrie after the whole debacle with Shannon was to sit her down and get her thoroughly drunk on multiple occasions, and then make her fight drunk to both learn how, insomuch as anyone could, and to determine what her limits were. In the process, she had also learned to more accurately judge how much alcohol was in a drink. Or, in this case, one very thoroughly brandy-soaked piece of cake. If Kenshin had to guess, there was at least an ounce of booze per slice, and it was a fairly high proof brandy that George had used.

Kenshin grinned approvingly at her, then said to George, "Remember the time Atsuko got drunk on this?"

George snickered. "I believe that was your payback for the brownies."

"Brownies?" Carrie said, confused.

"_Special _brownies." George emphasized.

"Special?" She was still confused.

"Oh, how the slang changes." George chuckled.

"Oh, special!" Carrie finally got it, and her eyes grew wide. "I'd _never _do something like that. What if a headhunter had found you?"

Kenshin shook his head, however, and corrected mildly, "The cake came first, and I didn't deliberately get her drunk. I wouldn't do that. I also didn't speak to her for quite awhile after the brownies; I didn't exactly find it funny. And Carrie's right that it could have gotten me killed."

George sobered. "Yet you forgave her."

Kenshin nodded. "She was part of my family. Of course I forgave her. It was simply an ill-advised prank."

"Kenshin's ability to forgive leaves me in awe, sometimes," Carrie said, softly.

George was quiet, for a moment, uncharacteristically so. Then, very softly, he said, "I have cancer, Grandpa. They're giving me several months. Maybe a year. Maybe two, but I'm old anyway."

Kenshin was unsurprised by this. He'd seen George's loss of weight, and given that George was on his second slice of cake now, he didn't think that a lack of calories had anything to do with the weight loss. His heart hurt, but he had been expecting to hear something of this nature. He simply said, "How can I help?"

George's eyes flickered upwards. "That one. She needs someone to look out for her. _Not _her mother, for love of God."

Kenshin met Carrie's eyes. Her lips settled into a thin, angry line. Kenshin didn't want to say no, but he hesitated before answering -- he was very reluctant to make any commitments that would cause him to chose between them. Carrie said, in an unhappy tone of voice, "Kenshin ..."

"She's not a bad kid." George glanced upwards for a second time. "A little self-centered at times, but she cooks and she cleans -- all sorts of chores -- without complaint and she's getting good grades in school. And she's doing okay with the baby. She's a pretty cranky one, too."

"Boarding school?" Kenshin offered, then shook his head quickly. "Not with the baby."

"College, soon enough. She'll graduate early, the way she's working through classes on that cyber school. She's maybe six months away at this rate. She could get an apartment and find a babysitter." George frowned. "She could join you, maybe, at that university in Canada, for the summer semester. You did say you two were planning on going to school through the summer, yes?"

Carrie had her arms folded and a distinctly unhappy expression on her face. Kenshin glanced over at her, wondering if she was going to explode -- though Carrie had been a _lot _better about her temper since he'd started demanding she be politer to him when angry.

Plus, George had just said he was dying. It wouldn't exactly be ... tactful ... to blow up right now.

Kenshin said quietly, "We'll discuss it, when and if it comes down to that. Have you asked Morgan what she wants to do?"

"She wants to be a lawyer." George grinned. "She's good with facts and figures, and I think she'd do well."

"Seacouver U doesn't offer much in the way of degrees in law." Kenshin found it was a relief to say this. "However, with the inheritance, she should be able to afford any university in the world. -- How's she handling the money, by the way?"

George's smile turned positively amused. "Ken, she wants to be an _lawyer_," he said, with emphasis. "Her family and her friends keep coming at her with hands outstretched for a bit of cash. They generally go away when she starts talking about repayment periods and produces contracts for them to sign. I think she completely pissed Toby off when she said he'd have to repay the trust with interest."

He paused, then added, a little more seriously, "She said something about learning how expensive the world was when she ran away, too, in Seacouver."

Kenshin snorted. Well, it sounded as if Morgan's ability to handle her daughter's money was one less thing he needed to worry about. "If she can keep her finances in order, she's most of the way there as far as being able to live on her own."

"It's not the money I worry about with her." George shook his head. "It's that she has no one in the world she can rely on except you and me. Her parents are, frankly, idiots, and her uncle is worse! There's some more distant relatives around, of course, but they don't know her or she's already burned her bridges there. She has a pretty bad reputation in the family -- at least partly deserved -- because of her behavior with her boyfriend. Bluntly, he was retarded, Ken-nii, and way older than she was, and it looked bad and it has ruined her reputation. That she won't give all her daughter's money away to family she barely knows means they all have their noses out of joint and, well, that she was promiscuous with a guy who was mentally handicapped is a perfect excuse for vicious gossip. Some say she did it _just _for the money."

Kenshin sighed. "Did we ever find out what was wrong with him?"

George shrugged. "Garrett told me to fuck off when I asked. Your solicitor -- and the man's a genius, I might add -- dug up some old gossip rags that had his mother dying of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver and apparently the rumor in their circles is that she managed to pickle her son's brains as well, before she drank herself into a grave."

Kenshin pinched the bridge of his nose. There had to be a way to get those medical records so they could either set their concerns to rest or know what they might be dealing with. Jeffrey's problems could have truly been anything from fetal alcohol to one of the nasty genetic disorders that required a special diet to prevent fatal brain damage.

Damage from his mother's drinking was tragic but not hereditary; if the kid had a chance at having a genetic issue, Kenshin wanted to know so they could provide the appropriate medical care as soon as possible.

He turned the discussion back to Morgan, for now. "I'll ... see what we can do. I agree that she needs family to support her. It's hard enough to raise a child, without doing it totally on her own -- there's not a chance of finding her a good husband, is there?"

"Kenshin!" Carrie said, truly shocked.

"Well," George said, much less surprised, "she certainly has a nice dowry. We could definitely arrange something, if she were willing."

"I can't believe you'd even consider ... oooh ..." Carrie sputtered to a halt and stared at them.

Both men gave her tired looks. Kenshin said, with a wry smile, "Sometimes I forget what century I'm living in."

The girl was young, a mother with a newborn, with her fiancé dead. And she -- or rather, her baby, but mom had control of the money -- was worth high eight figures in pounds sterling. In the time of Kenshin's birth, the solution would be _obvious_ -- find her a good man who'd treat her and his new stepdaughter well and make the family they all agreed she needed, with her. With the sort of money she had, she could have landed nobility.

Even now, she could probably find no shortage of aristocrats. George had daughters, but no sons, so his title would go to his grandson, Morgan's father. Morgan could truthfully call herself Lady Trevor.

Yes, finding her a husband, Kenshin thought, was a very practical, efficient, and reasonable solution to the problem.

George shook his head, however, "I've actually suggested that to her, you know. She'd have no shortage of suitors if we put the word out. She says, however, that she wants to go to school first."

"Good for her," Carrie responded, instantly. "I can't believe you'd consider an arranged marriage!"

Kenshin scratched his jaw, discovering he needed to shave in the process. He had an outcrop of peach fuzz on his chin. "Why not?"

He was hassling Carrie because it amused him to see her so angry over something that was entirely reasonable. Hers was a totally illogical reaction, very _Carrie_.

Carrie realized this, too, and said, "You are the biggest meddling fool ... I swear, Kenshin."

He suggested, mischievously, to George, "We could always ... meddle."

"Not a bad idea. One of my friends has a grandson -- he's a working man, but he'd treat her right ..." George's eyes were twinkling with merriment.

Carrie said stiffly, "I do hope you are joking."

"What's wrong with making an introduction?" Kenshin said, sweetly innocent. "And arranging things so people meet that need to know one another?"

"It's _meddling_."

"Brandon and Shannon don't seem to be complaining." He blinked at her, giving her his best naively innocent look.

"That's _different_."

"Brandon and Shannon?" George asked.

Kenshin smiled. "I'll tell you about them later."

He had continued to work on the ball of Christmas lights and had straightened out several strands. There were a few dozen more to go, and he said, "I can remember in the sixties, your father would have this entire house decorated with lights."

George's eyes lit up. "I always loved that. It was so merry."

"We could do it again." Kenshin eyed the supply of lights. Each strand was about twenty-five feet long. There were thousands of feet of lights in that mess.

"I was just going to do the tree," George said, diffidently. "I just brought the whole mess down because it was so tangled up."

"Do you want to do the house?" Kenshin asked. He did. He liked Christmas lights -- all the pretty colors suited his sense of aesthetics.

"Sure." George grinned.

"Then we'll do the house."

--

The roof needed repairs, Kenshin discovered, when let himself out an attic dormer window the following morning. The shingles were cracked and curling up. Some of the wood trim was rotten as well, and weathered and worn. He frowned at that, and made a mental note to see that it was all repaired.

Well, it would keep the rain off their heads through the holidays, anyway. Though he also decided to check for leaks in the attic, and apply some tar to the worst spots. He loved the old house, and didn't want to see any unnecessary damage done to it.

There were hooks already pounded into the eaves from past lights. He gingerly walked across dew-slick shingles to the edge and began threading the strands of lights though the hooks. However, the view quickly distracted him -- he sat back on his heels and regarded the vista with fascination.

Once upon a time, this had all been countryside. He remembered riding a horse for hours through fields and along creeks and dirt country lanes. Now, however, past the estate's walls were other estates -- newer houses, on lots of a few acres in size. It was still nominally "country" but they were gentleman farms. And past the estates, more densely packed houses rose. The outskirts of the city proper was only a few miles away.

The air had been more polluted, however, back then -- and, in truth, a few decades ago it had still been bad. It was a bit hazy, but that was mostly humidity. He couldn't smell any smog. In the last several years, the world had gotten a lot more serious about protecting the environment, out of necessity. Plus, people drove less because of the cost, and worked out of their houses more, and used fewer fossil fuels.

It was still gloomy overcast, and bitter cold. He thought it might snow later.

After a moment more of staring at the view, Kenshin returned to work.

He'd done this before -- many times, actually. He wasn't afraid of heights, and wasn't exactly breakable; he'd always volunteered for Christmas-light-stringing duty when he was living here.

He was affixing a long string of bright blue lights to the ridgeline when a car turned into the long drive up to the manor house. He didn't recognize the vehicle -- Saito was supposed to visit later, but this wasn't Saito's car. Curious, he peered over the edge of the roof at the visitors. The car parked, and from above, he identified Sebastian and a skinny woman he assumed was Morgan's mother Deborah. Deborah's hair was artificially blond, he could tell so from three stories above her head.

They hadn't noticed him on the roof. Kenshin walked around to the window and slipped back inside. Quiet out of habit and nature, he padded silently across the floor and took the servant's stairs down to the second floor. A sense of _ki _led him towards Morgan's room, and from inside, he could hear her wary, and very soft, greeting: "Mother. Father."

"Hi honey!" Deborah was cheerful, too cheerful. It was a sort of false good humor that set all his warning senses to jangling. "How's my granddaughter!"

"Asleep." Morgan's voice was low.

"Oooh, such a cute cute cute little girl ..."

"Waaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Deborah's voice, in a cootchie-coo tone, and the baby's displeased wail, were nearly simultaneous. Kenshin didn't blame the baby one bit; if he'd been abruptly woken up from a nap by someone babbling at him in that tone of voice he'd have been pissed too.

"Mom, I just got her to sleep!" Morgan protested.

"And I just got here and I want to see my granddaughter."

"Don't pick him ... MOM!" Morgan sounded nearly frantic. "Mom, put her down! She was having a nap. Mom! Mom!"

Morgan's voice was hitting a panicky note, and Kenshin stood outside the door, wondering what to do. He doubted Deborah was doing anything actually harmful to the baby. Morgan's motherly instincts were combining with Morgan's brattish tendencies and the result wasn't pretty. On the other hand, it was rude and obnoxious to wake a sleeping baby, make her cry, and then pick her up when the mother said, "No!" even if the mother was your own daughter.

The child was frantically crying now. Deborah said, "Just like you, Morgan. You cried all the time too. I say that's justice -- you got one just like yourself."

Kenshin winced.

"Mom!" Morgan sounded like she was near tears.

"We're going home now. Go pack your things." Sebastian said. "We'll meet you in the car."

Oh. Well, that explained Morgan's panic about Deborah picking her baby up.

"No! I don't want to go!"

"It's Christmas, honey. It's time for you to come home."

"Put my baby down!"

Morgan's fear had hit a note that Kenshin couldn't ignore. He pushed the door open to discover that Deborah was wrapping the baby up in a blanket, Sebastian was peering into a diaper bag, and Morgan was standing in the middle of the room with tears streaming down her face and her fist balled. "Stop it!" she screamed at her parents, "Stop it! I don't want to go with you!"

"Then stay here," Deborah said, angrily. "I'm taking my granddaughter home. This isn't your home, or hers."

She turned, and saw Kenshin, and said, in a mocking tone of voice, "Who's this? New boyfriend?"

Sebastian, however, knew Kenshin. He hissed, "Debs, it's _him_. That Kenshin guy."

Kenshin said, very calmly, "I suggest putting the baby down and leaving before I need to call the police."

"This is _stupid_. She needs to come home. George is an old sick man and he doesn't need to be looking after her, and he can hardly control her in the state he's in!" Deborah clutched the screaming infant to her shoulder.

"Not being _controlled _is part of the point, Mom," Morgan snarled. "Give me my baby back!"

Kenshin didn't want to get into a physical wrestling match with Deborah at the moment; she was holding the baby. Still, when she started for the door, Kenshin planted both feet solidly, and blocked her path by the simple expedient of standing in the doorway.

She stopped short -- like most people, and particularly women, she wasn't about to get in a fight with anyone. "Get out of my way."

"No." He reached in his pocket for the cell phone. He'd let the cops sort this out. At sixteen, Morgan was old enough even by modern laws to chose which relative she lived with. If need be, he'd get his solicitor involved.

"GIVE ME MY BABY!" Before he could open his phone, however, Morgan screamed, and lunged for Nicky. She managed to rip the child from Deborah's arms ... but then baby slid out of Morgan's grasp.

Kenshin dropped the phone, lunged, caught the infant a foot from the ground, and rolled away from all of them with the child tucked to his shoulder protectively, one hand splayed across the back of the baby's head and his back defensively turned towards the combatants. In a low, dangerous voice, he said, "Stop. Now."

The adults stopped; however, Kenshin's command-tone didn't quite work as well on the baby, who continued to scream.

"What the hell's going on here?" Carrie arrived in the doorway, sword in hand -- though Kenshin suspected he was the only one aware that she was armed. Carrie was getting pretty good at the see-me-not illusion many Immortals could use to hide their weapons.

"She's trying to take my baby away!" Morgan screeched. Hearing her mother's fear, the infant screamed louder.

Kenshin patted the infant's back. Nicky was rigid, wailing in Kenshin's ear, fists clenched, face going purple with outrage. However, he didn't think the kid was actually hurt -- her cries were outraged, in reaction to being roughly handled and feeding off her mother's upset, but she was not injured.

Kenshin could tell the difference in tone between a hurt baby and a merely distraught baby, but he would hazard a guess that Morgan couldn't yet. The two were feeding off each other, and Morgan was about to have a complete melt down because her baby was so upset.

"Carrie," Kenshin said, "Take Nicky and Morgan downstairs to the kitchen. I'm going to have a word with these two."

"You could have caused your baby to die!" Deborah snapped at Morgan. "Don't you ever _think_?

"You have no right!" Morgan took a step towards her mother, fists balled. "She's _mine_. You cannot take her from me! I won't let you! I won't let you! I won't let you!"

"Morgan, nobody's going to take your baby away." Kenshin spoke soothingly. "Here, take her downstairs with Carrie."

Morgan seized her baby back and bolted out of the room, tears suddenly streaming down her face. Carrie hurried after her, and Morgan turned his attention on her parents. "Just what do you think you're _doing_?"

"She needs to come home!" Deborah started to pursue Morgan, and Kenshin stepped back into the doorway. She stood there, jittering from foot to foot and clearly trying to decide if she could bolt around him. Kenshin folded his arms, squared his shoulders, and tried to look like he was taking up more space than he actually occupied.

She tried to squeeze past him anyway. Kenshin, disgusted, blocked her with an upflung arm. "Stop it. Listen to me. I will only say this once, and then I will call the police: You _must stop _this."

"She's my daughter! She needs to come home!"

"Get out of the way." Sebastian crowded behind his wife, and glared down at Kenshin with his fists balled.

Kenshin knew they weren't listening to his words. However, he felt compelled to try to reach them. He said, firmly and as calmly as he could manage, "You know I am Immortal and have lived over a century and a half. Over a century ago, I had a son who I loved very much. He was much like me, and I thought I was the closest to him of all my children. However, he was making some foolish mistakes and I tried to push him to be a better man -- I loved him dearly, but I didn't love what he was doing to himself and his wife and children. I am not sure he understood that even if I was displeased with behavior I still loved him. He ... left. He left all of us. Me, his children, his wife, his brothers and sisters. He's certainly dead now, and I do not know how or where he died."

He paused, wondering if Morgan's parents were understanding what he was saying. He added, "I made the same mistakes with my son that my Shishou made with me. I've vowed never again to make the same sort of mistake ... I caution you that if you push Morgan away you may find you would give anything to have her back, including accepting her in your life as she is, rather than you would wish her to be."

"Get the hell out of my way." Deborah had her fists balled and she glared angrily at Kenshin.

Yeah, they weren't listening. Well, he'd tried.

"Get out of my house, Sebastian." George's voice held nearly as much command as Kenshin's; Kenshin was impressed. He didn't think he'd ever heard George hit quite that note of _pissed _before.

"You can't keep my daughter here!" Deborah screeched.

"Your daughter is sixteen. If you want to take her home I suggest you go to the courts and try to get it court ordered. I suspect that once some of the stories about how you've treated her come to light in court, you'll find I will have no trouble obtaining legal custody." George sounded truly furious. "Giving her a choice between an abortion and being kicked out on the streets comes to mind as something the judge might be interested in. And allowing a fifteen year old girl to spend time unsupervised, overnight, with the same boy who got her pregnant before."

Deborah had gone white. Sebastian, red. "Grandfather, you don't understand. That boy was mentally deficient and we didn't know about the money ...! And we thought she was babysitting his little sister ... she _lied._"

Kenshin thought that was a rather thin excuse; he'd determined that Morgan was apt to lie almost immediately. And had she been his daughter, she would not have been babysitting for the Garrets to begin with. However, he held his tongue, recognizing this was George's house and George's fight.

"I understand perfectly well." George snapped back at Deborah. "I just don't agree. Now get out of my house before I chose to call the authorities."

After they'd left -- which they did under protest, and with promises to return later with lawyers -- George leaned on his cane and stared at the closed front door for a moment before locking it. Then he said, "Merry fucking Christmas to you too, 'Baz. -- Grandfather, were you talking about my great-uncle Yukio?"

"Aa." Kenshin sighed. He wondered if Morgan's parents would call the cops, and if so, what would happen. "We should go make sure Carrie doesn't kill Morgan, that we should."

"We need to talk. Tonight." George met Kenshin's eyes, then quickly looked away. "There's a story I need to tell you."

--

Morgan paced the kitchen angrily, her child held to her shoulder.

Carrie said hesitantly, "Has she tried to do anything like that before?"

"She _succeeded_." Morgan spun to face Carrie. "I _hate _her. In the hospital, when they released us, she was holding Nicky -- and she got in her car without me and put her in the carseat and drove away before I could get in. I had some friends there, Lisa and Jim. We thought my mom would come here, because that was the plan -- she _knew _I was staying here."

Morgan slapped her free hand, the one not clutching Nicky to her shoulder, against the refrigerator. The baby startled and began to cry again. Morgan paused her story to sooth her, then said, "We got here and she wasn't here. And she wasn't answering her cell phone. So we drove to her house -- to my old house -- and found she had set up a whole nursery in my old bedroom."

Tears trickled down Morgan's face. "I've lived with this sort of thing my whole life. She never listens to what I want. Neither does my father! They just tell me what I'm going to do. And what I was going to do, they told me, was come home and raise my baby there. Except if I moved in with them, they'd never let me raise Nicky. My _mom _would raise him. She even told me I wasn't ready to be a mother!"

Her baby was crying again and over the top of her howls, she said, "They thought they could keep the baby and I would come home to them. I _hate _them. They didn't want me there when I was pregnant, they _kicked me out_, but then they found out what the baby was worth and now they're trying to kidnap her because they say I can't raise her!"

"I'm sorry." Carrie tried to picture her own mother doing something so awful, and she couldn't. Her mother could be obnoxious at times -- but she did understand boundaries.

"The thing is, I'm not ready." Morgan was pacing quickly now. "I'm so not ready for this. I don't know what to do, Carrie. I'd give _anything _to have friends and family like you do. I don't. Jeffrey was all I had -- we both had fucked up family lives and he was everything for me. Nobody stands behind me ... well, Grandpa George does, but he's gonna die. And then where will I be?"

On her own, Carrie realized. And if George didn't make it a couple more years, she'd be on her own and a minor and almost certainly forced back to her parents by the law.

The baby hiccupped and started whimpering rather than howling.

"You were jealous." Carrie said, quietly. "That's why you did what you did. Pretending to be Kenshin."

Morgan bounced the baby in her arms gently. "Shhh. Shhhh," she said, though the baby wasn't crying anymore and seemed to be winding down. "Shhh. Shhh."

"Morgan ... you hurt _Kenshin_. You hurt Kenshin as much, maybe more, than you hurt me." Carrie folded her arms and glared. She could forgive something that wounded her, but anything that brought pain to Kenshin was a whole different matter.

Morgan glared at her. "It's not fair, you know. You have the great guy, and the great life, and parents who love you -- hell, they _chose _to have you. You're adopted, right? Richie told me Immortals are always found, not born." She patted her baby's back; he jumped and started crying again. "Your parents _wanted _you. They wanted you enough to chose to have you. Mine ... mine didn't. My mom tells me all the time I was an accident, and blames me for her having to get married to my father instead of Toby -- she was dating both of them! They fight all the time. I don't know why they don't get divorced, except that my father doesn't want to pay alimony and my mother doesn't want to lose her precious social standing."

In a smaller voice, Morgan added, "Nobody wants me. Nobody at all."

"Kenshin cares about you," Carrie found herself saying. She hesitated, then added, "The reason he hasn't offered to take you in is that he's worried about my reaction, I think."

She _knew _that was the reason, actually. And until this very moment she'd been wholly unwilling to entertain the idea. Now ... well, she was still angry, but the angriness was mixed with utter disbelief at Morgan's parents, and a bit of understanding.

Morgan snorted. "You don't like me."

"Kenshin's philosophy on life is catching, I think. He'd say he likes you, he just doesn't like your choices." Carrie met Morgan's eyes. "You really hurt us. And it was deliberate. And I'm pretty pissed about it, particularly because it was deliberate. And it hurt Kenshin. No, I'm not sure I want much to do with you -- because I don't trust you."

"I'm sorry." Morgan hugged her whimpering baby and paced back and forth. With heartfelt feeling, she repeated, "I'm _sorry_."

Carrie sighed. "Why did you do it?"

"I was angry." Morgan was wearing a hole in the floor, walking back and forth. "I was _angry_, okay?"

"Whatever did I do to you?" Carrie snapped. "Whatever did _Kenshin_ do?"

"I'm ... sometimes I just get so angry at _everything. _Not you. Just _everything_." Morgan let out a shuddering sigh. "I'm sorry, okay?"

"Next time you feel like that?" Carrie said, "I suggest a punching bag."

Morgan patted her baby. "Carrie, I don't know if I can do this."

"What?"

"Raise a child. I don't know if I'm ready. I don't want my mother doing it, but ..." Morgan swayed back and forth. "I ... I I'm all screwed up, Carrie. I can't _do _this. I can't! I can't!"

Morgan suddenly thrust the baby at Carrie, who reflexively accepted her. "Hold Nicky. I'm going ... I don't know where I'm going."

She ran out of the kitchen, sobs trailing after her.

"Yes, Morgan, I'd be happy to hold your baby," Carrie said, staring down at her armful. It was the first time she'd ever held an infant this small and she found she was scared to death. The child was so _vulnerable _-- helpless. Her newness and tinyness were terrifying.

And she was also profoundly unhappy. The baby was crying again, displeased wails. She hugged her close, wondering what she was supposed to do to get her to stop and make her happy. But then she grew quiet, though she scrunched his face up as if he was concentrating -- perhaps summoning the energy for more noise, she thought?

After a second, her face relaxed. She hiccupped and made a cooing noise. And the a certain odor of dirty diaper wafted up to her nose, and then to her everlasting dismay, she felt her arm grow damp as bodily fluids -- and not, she was reasonably sure, _urine _-- soaked through the baby's jumper and through her sleeve.

"Oh, ewwwww." Carrie stared down at the baby. Diapers weren't supposed to leak, were they? "Let's go find Kenshin, kiddo. I bet he knows how to change you."

--


	36. Chapter 36

After changing Nicky's diaper, and handing her back off to a rather nervous Carrie, Kenshin found Morgan in the loft of the old stables -- which had long ago been converted to a garage. She was crying helplessly, leaning against a worn oak timber, and rocking back and forth.

"Hey."

She didn't answer.

Kenshin sat down next to her. "My kids used to come up here, you know. It's a good place when you're feeling blue."

A man had died up here at Chiyoko's hand, as well, but he wasn't going to tell her that. He didn't think the stables were haunted by that particular ghost -- the man was long dead and gone. And so was Marshall. And Chiyoko was alive and well and he'd see her after Christmas break. He'd promised her and Tammy brunch at Denny's.

"I can't do it." Morgan wrapped an arm around the beam and pressed her face against the old, worn wood. "I can't do this, Ken. I can't be a mother. I can't. I'm sixteen! I can't deal with the baby and my mom trying to kidnap him ..."

"I don't think she's trying to kidnap him, exactly," Kenshin said, judiciously. "I think she is hoping if she takes him home you'll follow. She probably doesn't see it as kidnapping because she'd give him back when you agreed to move home. She loves you, she's just being rather ... dysfunctional ... about how she shows it."

She started to protest. He stilled her with an uplifted hand. "Wait, allow me to finish." Kenshin sat down cross legged next to her, and said, "Your mother is very wrong in what she is doing. As is your father. I do not agree with them, and candidly, just because someone is your parent, doesn't mean they are right."

"What were your parents like?" She asked, suddenly. "You're so ... so _special._"

Kenshin sighed. He only had dim memories to go on. "They died when I was small. I don't remember much. My father was a gentle man who never raised his voice, and who carried me about on his shoulders. My mother had a silly sense of humor and would sing funny songs and play the fool to make me and my father laugh."

She exhaled a deep and ragged sigh. "Remember when you mentioned adoption to me? I wanted ... I wanted to give the baby up. But I'm a minor. My mother and father wouldn't let me, they said they'd just get the baby if I tried. I'd rather raise her myself than let them do it. They'll hold her over my head for the rest of my life, and anyway, I think they're just after the money in the trust fund."

Kenshin grimaced. "There might be a few ways around that, legally. They'd have to pass a homestudy and if they did, there are some objections that my lawyer could bring up in court if they tried to get custody. He's very good; he's been a lawyer since Roman times. However, you may not like those objections."

"What, that my parents let me run wild and unsupervised, then beat me when I screwed up? Feel free to object if it keeps the baby out of their hands. I wish they'd been firmer with me, really."

"Then you'd never have met Jeffrey." Kenshin reached a hand out and rested it on her shoulder. "My parents died when I was small, and I was raised until my early teens by a man named Hiko. He was many things: rude, overbearing, arrogant, irrationally demanding, unsympathetic, and verbally and physically abusive. However, he laid the seeds for me to become who I am today. And I am quite happy with who I am today."

"And your point is?" she said, in irritation.

"That we learn from adversity."

"I don't want to be a mother."

"Are you sure?" Kenshin asked. He put his hands on his knees again and regarded her with concern.

She sighed. "I _don't_. If ... if I could give the baby up and see it went to a good family, I would. I'm _sixteen_, Kenshin. I want to finish school, and go to college. I want to hang out with my friends, go to the mall, go to raves, be a _kid_. I don't want ... I don't want to devote my entire life to a little baby. It's selfish, but I don't _want this_."

"She's Jeffrey's."

Morgan shrugged. "I'd like to see her grow up. Send her birthday gifts and see her on holiday. She's mine. She's Jeffrey's. I'd like to know her. See how much she's like Jeffrey -- and even if she is a little slow, so what? I _loved _Jeffrey, and it wasn't for his brains. It was because he was kind and gentle and fun to be around."

Kenshin was silent for a moment. "She's got an eighty million pound trust fund. With that sort of money, you could hire a full-time nanny to take care of her while you went to school, and to watch her while you went out with friends. The fund is set up to provide for her care, and a hiring a full-time nanny would be well within the scope of that."

Morgan made a face. "Then I have to deal with the nanny. Nannies quit, or sometimes you have to fire them, and then I'm stuck with the kid again. I don't want to have an employee. Besides, it seems like ... cheating. Like doing it halfway. I just don't want the responsibility."

Kenshin considered her thoughtfully. Not only was she offering to give up her child, she was giving up a fortune, as well. And her argument about the nanny was thin, at best. His conclusion was that she truly didn't want to be a mother. "Okay."

"Okay?" She blinked at him.

"I'll help you find her new parents."

She leaned her cheek against the old oak beam for a moment. Then she said softly, without looking up, "Do you want her?"

"Oro?" He stared at her, dumbfounded. He had, of course, had nebulous plans to adopt children again. Now, however, was not a good time, and it had not even occurred to him that she might offer. Her strident cries of, "Mine!" in regards to the baby were still strong in his memory.

Morgan shook her head. "I like you, Ken. I _trust _you. And if you take her, I know I'll see her, and I know you won't be mean to her, or raise her with weird religious beliefs, or, or, or give up on her if she does something stupid. Because I did lots of stupid things with you, and you didn't give up on me."

"I ..." He stopped and simply stared at her. His mind was spinning, and he couldn't seem to form a coherent thought.

"Also, the money."

He wondered if she was going to ask for a share of it. He wouldn't be surprised.

"You have a fortune of your own, yes?"

"The equivalent to several hundred thousand pounds. And an apartment in Tokyo. It's not a fortune. I live on the interest."

"But you've managed it well, for decades. Whoever gets the baby gets control of her money. I want it to be her fortune to be there for her when she's old enough to handle it herself. I think you'd see to that."

"Don't you want part of it?" He asked, mostly because he was curious what her answer would be.

That earned him a snort. "_Money _is what got Jeffrey killed, and it nearly got me killed, and it got Sasaki shot, and you hurt, and Richie hurt, and ..." she trailed off, then added. "I'm smart. I can go to college and get a good education and then have a career that will make me plenty of money, enough to live well on. Why the _hell _does anyone need more? Too much money's more trouble than it's worth."

"I see you've thought this through." He agreed with her, at least, on the money. With almost a century to grow it, he could have had much more sizable fortune if he'd put more interest back into investments. However, he liked helping people, and he liked travel, and old cars, and gadgets, and books, and movies, and a thousand small expenses that all added up. He figured that as long as his home was paid for and his nest egg kept up with inflation and was conservatively invested in safe things, he didn't _need _anything more.

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her eyes. "At three AM, when the baby's been crying since seven in the evening? I have lots of time to think."

He nodded. "I'll need to discuss it with Carrie, Morgan, and I don't know if I'll say yes. But I will promise to help you find good parents for her."

"Carrie'd be a good mother."

"She was ... would be." Kenshin stood up, and offered her his hand. "Come on, let's go back to the house."

--

Kenshin stepped into library, and said to Carrie, "Morgan's lying down to take a nap. I said we'd watch the baby. I don't think she's had much sleep in the last month. How's Nicky?"

Carrie glanced down at the baby in her arms. Blue eyes blinked back up at her, and then the baby smiled. She was wrapped in soft cotton blanket that was the same color as those eyes; Carrie thought blue was a good color for this little girl. "She's okay, I guess. She stopped crying."

"You're calm." Kenshin held his arms out, and she passed the child to him. This prompted a hiccup and a few wails that quickly faded when he cradled the child to his shoulder and gently patted her back. "She's a tough baby. Some babies are easy and some are hard. This little girl is going to grow up to have a quick temper and a lot of personality, I believe. But babies respond to calmness, and Morgan just becomes frantic when Nicky starts crying, and they're feeding off of each other's mood."

He walked to the library window and watched out it, for a moment, hand stroking the infant's back. She smiled, watching him. Kenshin's hair -- bleached and dyed back to its original red -- was coming loose from his pony tail, and it tumbled down around his face and across the baby's bare head. The child snuggled happily into his bony shoulder, tiny fists clutching at the silk of his green shirt. And the morning sun shone through that window, lighting both of them with slanting golden rays.

"Morgan's put me in a bit of a tough position," he said, voice low.

"What did she do, proposition you?"

"Huh?" Kenshin looked up at her. Then he shook his head. "No. I think we've established clear boundaries there. And she's seeing me as an elder now, not a potential boyfriend. -- No, Carrie. She doesn't want this baby."

"How can she not want her baby?" Carrie said, stunned.

"She is both extremely intelligent, and extremely self-centered. She sees that the baby will be an obstacle to living the life that she wants. She doesn't see the joy this child could bring her, she just sees the dirty diapers and the screaming and the sleepless nights." Kenshin turned around and leaned back against the windowsill. He crossed his ankles, cradled the baby to his chest, and fell silent. Now his red hair seemed to glow as it was lit from behind by the sun.

A ghostly memory surfaced: Kenshin, sitting on a bench in the garden below, the sun turning his red hair to fire.

Kenshin continued, in a soft, thoughtful voice, "Had she told me that she wanted to give the baby up for adoption because it would be best for the baby, I would have tried to convince her to keep the child. If she was thinking only of the baby's best interests, I would do everything in my power to talk her out of giving her up."

Kenshin stroked the baby'sback. "Sixteen is more than old enough to be a good mother. I've known many young mothers that age -- some married, some not. Some modern, some not."

He looked down at the child's fuzzy head and caressed it with one callused hand. Carrie smiled at the expression on his face. Kenshin's love of children never ceased to amaze her -- and they immediately responded to his affection for them. Somehow, if there was a baby around, Kenshin would end up holding it. Random preschoolers would run up to him and start conversations. Elementary aged children invited him to join their games. Awkward teenagers saw him as a peer, even if they knew the truth of his real age. College kids turned to him for advice, wisdom, and a video game partner.

It was just part of who Kenshin was.

He sighed. "The thing is, she's not thinking of the baby's interests. She's thinking of hers. It's purely selfish, Carrie, and I am not sure that she's even capable of changing. If she is, it won't be for years -- she has a lot of growing up to do. Because she wants to give her baby up for _selfish _reasons, I support her in that choice."

"But ..."

"Carrie." Kenshin met her gaze. "You've met her parents. Selfish people too. I am sorry that they are my descendents, and there was a reason I stopped contact with that side of the family. I was not pleased with how they behaved, and they haven't changed. There are those I am proud to be related to -- Saito comes to mind, which is something I never thought I'd actually say ..." he trailed off. Grinned briefly. She resolved to get the story there later. And he continued, "And George has a cousin who is one of my favorite people in the world -- he lives in Dublin, and we'll have to make time to meet him. But I digress. Morgan's parents are selfish people."

Kenshin stroked the baby's back. "Being a parent is about giving, to a large extent. You _receive_, too, but, particularly when they are small, you mostly _give_. You give your time, and your labor, and your emotional energy. And lots of money. You worry and you plan and your life revolves around the little one's every need."

His stroking turned to patting. The baby's eyes were closed; Carrie wondered if she'd gone to sleep. "And your reward? Is this." He pointed a finger at his armful. "It's a contented baby, or a preschooler's squeal of delight. It's hugs and kisses and a little one who calls you _Mommy _or _Daddy _and who grows up happy and healthy before your eyes. That's your payment. And for someone who's selfish, who is primarily concerned about their own needs ... it's not much of a wage for their labor. And so they find themselves resenting the child, and growing angry, and demanding things that are impossible for the child to do as a form of compensation for the care they give to the child. Perfect behavior, perfect grades. And this is not a healthy environment for the child."

Kenshin frowned. "Children have needs. They need consistency, and lots of labor, some of it unpleasant. Selfish parents aren't particularly good at meeting those needs -- and so their babies grow up to be demanding, and unpleasant, and manipulative children. These are traits they learn in order to make sure that their very real needs are met. And it's not merely material needs; it is emotional needs that they manipulate others for -- attention, praise, affection. Or, if that fails, negative attention -- it's better to be yelled at than ignored, sometimes."

Kenshin walked to the couch and sat down. "I strongly suspect the reason Morgan was with Jeffrey was that he _met _her need for love and affection, or at least, what she thought was love -- she's probably never known real, unconditional, love in her life and Jeffrey offered that to her. She could think circles around him, and keep him wrapped around her finger, and he worshipped the ground she walked on without ever knowing he was being manipulated, and she ate it up. It wasn't a healthy relationship -- she describes him as 'mine' like he was something to be possessed. But it worked for them, in a weird sort of way."

Kenshin leaned back against the couch. "Carrie, Morgan's asked me to take the baby, and even that is selfish on her part. She wants me to adopt her rather than a stranger so that she can continue to see her -- but only when it is convenient for her."

Carrie blinked.

Kenshin smiled down at the baby. "I always thought I'd have a family again, children and a wife. Someday."

She blinked again.

Kenshin exhaled a long, ragged breath. "I cannot tell you how much I want _this _child -- she is in my arms, now, here. She is a descendent of my son. She _needs _me. Everything I've ever learned tells me that Morgan will not be a good mother, not at this point in her life, and that I can be the parent this child needs. Today. Now. I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't looking for it, that I was not. But here we are."

He tickled the child's cheeks. Nicky kicked her feet and smiled. Then he looked up at Carrie. His eyes were troubled. "You, on the other hand, are also not looking to be a mother right now. You have medical school. Soon enough you'll be a student doctor, working impossibly long hours under very stressful conditions. I am not sure that adding a baby to our relationship is wise at this time. And -- you come first."

"You could drop out." She saw the agony in his eyes. He _wanted _this child. He wanted children, really -- this baby would not be the last. "School's not that important to you, is it? You'd much rather be a daddy than an employee. You have enough money in savings for all three of us to live on until I have my degree, then I can support us ..."

"Money's not a concern." His lips twisted up into a smile. "Not for this one, anyway. My primary goal for school was to give myself some skills that I could use if anything ever happened to my money. But for now, the money isn't important, no."

"You'd be _happy _staying at home with a baby, being Mr. Mom. I can see it in your eyes, Kenshin."

He nodded. "Well, that, and the occasional bit of travel, but yes. I enjoy children."

"So what's the problem?"

"Do _you _want this?" He unwrapped the blanket from around the baby, spread it out on the floor, and set her down on it on her tummy. Under the blanket she was just wearing a diaper and a tiny ruffled t-shirt, but the library was warm enough to be comfortable. It had been one of the warmer rooms in the house since they'd installed an extra radiator in the room in the early 1900's for Byron's comfort. He walked again to the window "Carrie ... I had thought we would have time for just us, for a bit."

She followed him to the window and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "I love you, Kenshin. Whatever you chose, I will be happy with."

Kenshin snorted. "You know what I want. In this, however, I want to know what _you _want." He twisted around to face her, and rested his face against her shoulder for a moment. "There's no wrong answer here, but I'm asking you to make a decision about your future. Take your time."

He stepped away, then, and looked up at her. In the sunlight streaming through the window, the scars on his cheek glowed white against his olive skin. His amethyst eyes were bright, and a smile played around his lips. "There are many good parents in the world who want a child, Carrie. If not us, then I can find someone who truly wants the child, and will love her and care for her and cherish her. Say yes only if _you _want to become a mother."

He turned, obviously intending to leave her with the child.

"Where are you going?"

"Christmas lights," he said, pointing roofward. "I am only about half done."

--

He was a good bit closer to completely finished with the lights on the roof, and was standing on the edge trying to decie on the best way get lights out to the trees -- an extension cord hung from the roof or an extension cord across the lawn -- when he heard footsteps on the shingles behind him.

He turned, expecting Carrie (who wasn't particularly scared of heights) or perhaps Morgan (he had no idea of her attitudes towards rooftop excursions.) However, it was George, leaning on his cane and making a cautious way across the shingles.

The loose, weather beaten, cracking shingles. Slippery shingles. On a steeply pitched roof.

"George," Kenshin said, "If you fall to your death, you realize that you'll traumatize me for life?"

George flashed him a denture-laden grin. But the smile faded too quickly. He said, "I have a letter for you."

"You came out here to give me a letter." Kenshin scowled at him. Until now, he'd never suspected George of dementia.

"No," George said. He eased himself down to sit on the shingles. "Well, yes, but it's about sixty years overdue. I came out here because I wanted to talk without little-girl-ears listening in. The walls in that house are too thin."

Kenshin held his hand out. The letter that George handed him was folded and tucked into an unsealed envelope, and the paper was as thin as tracing paper. It was yellowed with age. And on the front was the kanji for Yukio's name, and Yukio's precise handwriting.

"What's this?" Kenshin sat down on the aging shingles. The letter had his address on it -- an old address in Tokyo, at a row house that had been destroyed by Allied bombs during the Second World War. If he closed his eyes, he could still picture that home, with its shabby, sparse furnishings. A neighbor on one side had been a drunk, and on the other, a very old woman living off her late husband's pension. He'd avoided the drunk, who tended towards mean, but had spent many hours playing _Go _with the old woman.

Both had died when the bombs fell. He'd lived, of course, and they had called it a miracle when they had dug him out of the rubble, thought him dead, and he had woken among the corpses being prepared for burial later. Later finding a few keepsakes of his life with Kaoru intact had seemed a bigger miracle to him though, admittedly, he was glad to have revived before being buried.

"I promised him I'd mail it." George sighed. He wouldn't look at Kenshin. Instead, he broke off a crumbling bit of asphalt shingle and flicked it out into the garden.

Kenshin slit the tape holding the letter open. "Kaoru said you'd met him one time when I saw her, in the afterlife. But you denied it. I thought perhaps you'd run into him in passing and never known who he was."

"I ... didn't know right away." George sounded miserable.

Kenshin scanned his late son's words. A lump rose in his throat. "He says ... he says he's sorry we argued. He says he's been captured by the British and to come rescue him. _Why _didn't you give me this, George? I never knew what happened to him."

"He died." George wrapped one boney, age-spotted arm around his leg. "I'm sorry. You could have come for him, but he was already dead. We ... we killed him. I don't think they meant to actually kill him, but he got sick and died during interrogations."

In the Japanese he hadn't spoken for seventy years, George added quietly, "I'm so very sorry."

Kenshin exhaled a ragged, harsh breath. He had known, consciously, that Yukio was dead. Probably, long dead. It was 2014 and Yukio had been born in the late 1800's. Still, it hurt to hear it confirmed. "How?" he said, raggedly.

"I was in intelligence." George shuddered, and Kenshin realized he was talking about the war. "Because I spoke Japanese, and I'm good with numbers, they put me to work code-breaking. I was _seventeen_, Ken. I told them I was eighteen when I joined, but I enlisted when I was fifteen and this was just after I turned seventeen. They sent me to India to help with the war effort there -- remember, we Brits kicked the Japanese out?"

"I remember." Kenshin had been on the other side of that war, and he had counted himself lucky to find himself a position as a translator himself, and not a combatant. If his superiors had only known the identity of the "boy" who transcribed English-language newspapers, magazines, films and radio broadcasts into Japanese for them in search of intelligence they'd likely have been stunned ... but those hard times were thankfully long past, and as long as China and North Korea continued to behave themselves, Japan wasn't likely to go to war again in the near future.

People who were completely fluent in both Japanese and English were still rare, even after seven decades of peace between the west and Japan. In the 1940's, they had been vanishingly rare. His less-than-complete fluency then had still been enough to earn him a valued position that didn't involve killing people.

George shuddered again. "Mostly, I did code breaking. I didn't see a lot of combat. I was too valuable to put out on the front lines. But sometimes I translated for interrogations. One of the men they brought in to our camp was a Japanese gentleman who was caught sneaking away from enemy territory. They thought he was a spy ... he was tall, for a Japanese man, and very athletic even though he walked with a limp. I thought he looked familiar, though I didn't know why."

Kenshin recalled, "He was shot in the ankle as a teenager, and badly burned as well. He nearly died of blood poisoning."

"I saw the scars." George confirmed. "Anyway, when the men caught him, they found he had a British passport hidden in the lining of his coat. They -- they thought he was a traitor of some sort. I mean, he was caught leaving Japanese occupied territory by dark of night. And he spoke absolutely fluent English, the King's English. It was clear he'd been raised in Britain and not Japan. And he was caught in _enemy territory_."

"They thought he was a spy." Kenshin closed his eyes. Easily, he could picture the British command assuming that a Japanese man, a British subject, caught in enemy territory, would be a spy. Hell, America had put a huge chunk of its Japanese citizens in interment camps for the war, out of concern they might be traitors.

What in the hell was Yukio doing in Japanese-occupied India, of all places?

He could answer his own question: tilting at windmills. Likely, he'd gotten some grand notion he could make a difference there. And it had gotten him killed.

George nodded. Miserably. "They asked me to translate some letters he had in his possession. They were from friends in Japan and a wife -- I didn't connect the name at first, I mean, her name was so common. And his name, too -- there's a thousand Yukio Himuras out there. I saw the name, but it didn't mean much. There were two Yukio Himuras that I knew of just among the command structure of the Japanese in India. It's a common name. And he looked younger than he really was. I would have guessed thirty, not almost fifty."

Kenshin nodded.

"They ... interrogated him. When I first saw him, he was in pretty good shape. Then ... he wasn't. They were holding him in a cell." George shivered, and Kenshin didn't think it was because of the damply cool afternoon air. "They didn't need me to translate for him, of course, but there was an officer that they were also trying to get information out of. I had to walk past his cell to get to the interrogation room."

George exhaled out, sharply. He'd gone very pale.

"They were _torturing _him. Oh, it was nothing official, but the officers were looking the other way while their men took all their anger out on him! And I thought it was right!" George slammed his cane against the worn shingles. "I thought he was nothing more than a traitor myself. I thought he was a spy too, and it infuriated me! And -- and he begged me to get word to his family where he was and I told him _no_. I told him he needed to confess to spying and tell what damage he'd done. And he cursed me out and told me I was a fool. He said he was British, and I said, if was British, why wasn't he fighting on our side? And he said ... I'll never forget this, but he said that choosing sides in this war was like choosing between his brothers. I didn't know he meant that literally."

Aki had fought -- literally, fought -- on the Japanese side. He had been sent to the South Pacific, again as that ever-popular choice of _translator, _but had seen plenty of action. And he had been willing and ready to fight. Kenji's sons and grandson -- George -- had gone to war on the side of the Allies. Kenshin recalled this with real grief.

He himself had supported Japan not because he agreed -- or disagreed, precisely -- with the issues that had brought them to war, but because Japan was his home, and the Japanese were his people, and what else was he to do? He'd grieved, but he had helped in his own small way, through the war.

George was shaking. He said weakly, "It wasn't until much later that I realized he was a much taller version of my uncles."

"They tortured him." Kenshin didn't have to ask what had happened, exactly. Such things occurred during war. He didn't want to know the details. They didn't matter. His son was long dead now.

"It wasn't right. The British were the good guys." George was shaking. "We were the _good _guys, Kenshin."

Kenshin thought of his people: among them friends, family, neighbors. They had fought and died in that war. They had been good people too. He didn't correct George, however, because he knew what George meant: it was a shock to find that the good people you knew as your own could commit terrible crimes. And that was equally true regardless of which side of the war you fought on.

George continued quietly, "But you have to understand -- we'd been blown to bits. Our families were dying back home during the Blitz. We'd seen atrocities ... the Japanese were _not _exactly innocent of torture themselves."

"Aa." No, they weren't

"And here was this man -- this man who spoke English with a cultured, beautiful accent; who claimed to have attended school in London; who claimed he was a British subject; who we caught not half a mile from the Japanese front line. Hell, yeah, we thought he was a spy. He certainly wasn't fighting on our side, and what other reason would he have to be there but as a spy or a traitor? There's some logic flaws there, mind."

"Yeah, a few."

"But it was the middle of the war."

"Aa, it was."

"And ... and when I saw him next, he was very ill. I was on my way to translate for an interrogation with another man. Those were brutal, mind -- I knew what they'd done to him. And he was feverish. He had an infection, and pneumonia. He said he was afraid that he was going to die. Usually it didn't go that far, but I suspect the boys thought the same way I did: that he wasn't just an enemy, he was a _traitor. _And I told him _good _that he was going to die, and I walked away. And he called after me in Japanese that I was his nephew. I guess someone had told him my name."

George had tears rolling down his face. "I told him I didn't have an uncle who was a traitor. I told him that in _Japanese_."

And after the war, Kenshin recalled, George had never again spoken the language.

"Did you realize ...?"

George shook his head. "He looked so young. I had it in my head that he was about thirty. You Japanese don't age, even when you're _not _Immortal, I swear. I just thought he was delusional. He was that sick. Or maybe I was delusional. Maybe _I _didn't want to believe, all along, that this was my uncle."

George exhaled raggedly, and continued his story. "He ... during the night, he wrote the letter you're holding. I don't know how he ever expected to mail it, but as I said, he was pretty sick. They asked me to translate it. And ... and I saw your name on it. And your address. And I knew. I had written letters to the same address as a child. And I kept that letter. I knew then he was my uncle. I knew he was exactly what he said he was, because you bitched about it constantly: a shiftless wanderer who shirked responsibility."

Kenshin sighed. "Yes. Unfortunately. There's more to it than that, unfortunately, but yes."

"I could have told them, Kenshin. If only I had listened, or asked the right questions. He _knew who I was _and I told him he was a traitor. He wasn't a traitor, just a fool." George ran a battered hand over his balding head. Half his fingers were still splinted after his encounter with Dall, four months before. "If I'd listened, if I hadn't been such a judgmental idiot, I would have known he was no spy."

"It likely would not have made a difference." Kenshin wrapped an arm around George's shoulders. "At least I know what happened now."

"I thought you'd be angry at me. For not recognizing him."

"I'm angrier at Yukio, for being such a fool." Kenshin rubbed his eyes. He wasn't really crying, but they were damp. This had happened a long time ago, and he'd always thought Yukio might have died of misfortune, anonymous and alone, rather than old age. They had traded angry words, but he had been unable to fathom why Yukio hadn't contacted his wife, children, or siblings after that.

"George, you could not have changed anything. If you had recognized him, and spoken for him, it would only have cast suspicion upon your own honor. Under the circumstances, _I _would have thought him a spy as well -- and it's distinctly possible he was, depending on your definition of _spy_."

"What?"

Kenshin grimaced. "Yukio had a streak of -- shall we say -- righteous indignation. For better or worse, he sided with Japan during that war. It's part of what we fought about -- I didn't raise him to be blindly nationalistic, and he refused to even admit that he was being so. He said he wasn't choosing sides, simply helping people who needed it and making sure the truth got told ... He had been badly treated in America, and became bitter, resentful, and suspicious of Westerers ... So, if he said he wasn't a spy, he might have been telling the truth or he might have been lying. I don't know. Most likely, he was working for a paper as a photojournalist. He was a rather good photographer, and that's often how he made money."

Kenshin contemplated the past for a moment. War was never as simple as good versus evil, no matter what the winner's historians would claim later. After a moment, he said, "I suspect he was sending his photographs and films to the Japanese media, and it's entirely possible he was giving them to the Japanese command, as well. I've found films and photographs in old archives that were credited to Himura Yukio, but, as you said, it's quite a common name. I was never sure if they were his work, or someone else's.

"He might even have been attached to the Japanese forces in the area. With his ankle, and his burns, and his damaged hands, he would not have been able to fight ... but I suspect he would have helped in what ways he could."

"Oh." George looked dumbfounded. Kenshin wondered if he'd gone all these years thinking Yukio was some poor, innocent traveler caught in the middle of a firefight. Hardly. Yukio was more than savvy enough to stay away from the front lines of a war unless he had a reason to be there.

"I gave Atsuko a camera that was Yukio's, in fact, as her first camera. I've always liked journalism." Kenshin shook his head, as if that might shake his scattered thoughts into order. "There is, however, a somewhat blurry line between spying and journalism, when the journalist doesn't work for your side of the war, and the command on the enemy's side benefits from their work."

"Heh." George let out a rough, shuddering breath, then, and said. "You're not angry at me at all?"

"Merely sad. I wish you'd told me this sooner. It would have saved me years of wondering. But not angry. I ... have kept dark secrets myself, George. I can't fault you for this. Though I will observe that the guilt must have eaten you alive over the years, and it needn't have. It wasn't your fault."

George blinked at him. And sighed. "I always thought you'd be angry at me. That you'd blame me."

Kenshin asked gently, "Do you know where he's buried?"

George bowed his head. "There's a mass grave of war dead in India. I think he's there, unless the Japanese took them home later, after the war. I can give you directions, if you want to go."

"Later." Kenshin knew he would leave flowers, and pay his respects. Seventy years had passed, however, since that war. A little more longer wouldn't matter. "George, I am grateful that you did tell me this, even though so much time has passed."

George shrugged. And looked away.

Gently, in Japanese, Kenshin said, "We've all made mistakes. I was never forgiven for some of mine. And so I give forgiveness, because this, too, is a way of atoning."

"Oh." George blinked at him.

"You needn't keep secrets from me, Georgie-kun. Even ones like this."

George scratched his jaw and then said dryly. "I suppose I should confess to stealing a bottle of mead from Darius when I was fourteen, too."

Kenshin blinked at him. George giggled. Kenshin said, with a sigh, "George, why didn't you just take some wine from the house's cellar?"

"Because it was a dare? And anyway, I wanted to know what mead tasted like."

"Gods. Your grandfather would have had your hide." Kenshin pinched the bridge of his nose. "For that matter, so would Darius, if he'd known."

"Oh, I think he knew, actually. At least, he gave me a bottle on my wedding night with a note on it that he hoped I enjoyed this one as much as the first."

George had married at fifteen. Kenshin winced. He hadn't known about that. But then -- he'd learned to drink sake a lot younger. And at fifteen, George had been a lot more responsible than many so-called adults that Kenshin had known. Theft of mead notwithstanding.

George smiled. "My daughter was the result of that theft and all things considered, I have never regretted that. I, umm, learned about the effects of mead on lessening the inhibitions of girls that night. I swear I didn't _plan _to seduce her. I just wanted to share the loot! But anyway ... the stuff is rather potent."

Kenshin snickered. "It is a shame, I suppose, that you never knew your uncle Yukio. I suspect you two would have gotten along splendidly, that you would."

George gazed out across the landscape, pale blue eyes a bit distant. "A shame. Yes. -- Has Morgan spoken to you?"

"About adopting her baby? Yes, she has."

"What have you told her?"

"That I'd think about it."

"You want that child, though. And it would be the best thing for everyone -- for the baby, for Morgan, for you. Kenshin, you _love _children. And I know that you want little ones of your own. You will be very, very happy with babies of your very own again."

"But there's Carrie." Kenshin ran a hand over his face. "George, once upon a time, I'd have shoved the baby into Carrie's arms, and said, 'here, take care of her for a bit ...' and then after a bit had passed, a few weeks, a few months, I would have said, 'do you want to give her up now?' and watched Carrie latch onto that child with the ferocity of a mother lion and tell me she'd take my head off herself before giving her up. But that was once upon a time, and I have grown wiser."

George nodded.

"It needs to be Carrie's choice. I ... pressured Kaoru. Hell, I dragged Yahiko home by the collar, literally, slung over my shoulder. I handed him to Kaoru and said that they would be student and teacher, because I knew they needed each other. And I was right, and they became the closest of family. And then there were the Himura children, and Chiyoko, as well. Each time, I brought them into our home without discussing things much with Kaoru. I knew she would say yes, and come to love them, and she did."

"So what's the problem?"

It was his turn to stare out at the countryside -- or what had been the countryside once. He watched a steady procession of cars on the road in front of the manor house. It was late afternoon, close to rush hour, and people were starting to return home from their work. "Kaoru suffered a lot, because of me, and because of my desire to have a family. And then she was torn away from those she loved more than once, because she had to chose between them and me. She hurt, sometimes desperately, because she was missing family scattered across three continents."

He found a pebble on the roof and studied it for a moment, wondering how it had gotten up here. Had a bird carried it aloft? Then he sent the pebble sailing over the edge and onto the circular drive, far below their feet. "As well, it means _commitment -- _and I don't think I need to elaborate to you what creating a family means to Immortals. Assuming we don't lose our heads, and assuming that your children have offspring of their own, it means you will be involved in a family for generations to come. Or -- it means the pain of walking away, because over the years the descendents of your children have become so unfamiliar to you as to be complete strangers."

Kenshin shook his head. "I see Kenji in you, George. You have his sweet temper. And a good bit of Jessica as well -- her logical mind, and a bit of her humor. But in Morgan? I see nothing, no resemblance at all. And sometimes I wonder if I have any sort of familial responsibility to them. They mostly do not even know who I am. I promised Sanosuke and Yahiko I would look after their descendents ... and yet even Richie questions my sanity when I carry this promise to its logical extremes. Perhaps there's some absolution there, if even the reincarnation of those friends think I'm being a bit silly."

George snorted a laugh. "You never were one for doing things halfheartedly. Kenshin -- can I point something out to you?"

"Aa?"

"By looking out for each and every one of your descendents, and those of your friends, you cling to the past. It's as if you don't want to leave your history behind you."

"Oh." George was right, and he'd never really seen it that way.

George's smile was gentle, and somehow distant. "We both need to move forward and leave our pasts behind."

Kenshin glanced over at him, and a cold chill ran down his spine. He'd seen that expression before. George looked at peace -- he knew, then, that George had confessed his sins because he was tying up loose ends. And it hurt, because he would miss the old man. But it was his time.

He reached out and rested his hand over George's. "I'm proud of you, George. _Thank _you."

"Do you think we will meet again?" George asked quietly.

Kenshin's lips twisted up into a smile. A real one. "I'd be delighted if that happens."

And then something occurred to him. "George, I've wondered why I am finding so many friends from the past here, now. I thought perhaps fate sent them to me because I would need them. Perhaps there would be some great disaster we had to avert -- some big, bad villain we had to stop -- or something of that nature. But -- but perhaps I've got it all wrong. Maybe they somehow chose to meet again in this lifetime, because they simply like each other. And me. Or perhaps the fates sent us together because we need each other, as friends and allies."

George nodded. "It's a good a theory as any."

Kenshin's slid his hand into his pocket. He found the little wooden box and pulled it out and flipped it open to show George. "I've been living in the past for too long, Georgie-kun. It's time I joined the present. Want to be there when I ask her?"

George took a pair of bifocals out of his shirt pocket and peered at the ring. "That's a pretty stone. Certainly, I want to see this!"

--

He found Carrie downstairs in the library. The baby was asleep on the blanket on the floor -- and not old enough to go anywhere yet. Kenshin judged it was safe enough to pull Carrie outside onto the patio behind the house. They could hear if she cried.

George, grinning like a fool, followed, but stopped in the doorway. He had a camera in his hand.

Carrie, after a suspicious glance at George, said, "I was thinking about what you said about the baby ..."

He held his hand up. In Japanese, he advised her gravely, "Regardless of your decision, I want to marry you."

She fell silent. And stared down at him, brows drawing together -- then mouth opening in a startled, gorgeous smile.

A long time ago, he'd tried to propose to Kaoru and had totally botched it. She'd ended up in tears, because he hadn't been confident enough articulate what he was thinking in plain speech. He had promised himself there wouldn't be a single moment of hesitation now. He knew what he wanted, and he was confident enough in himself to know he was worthy of her. And equally, he knew she loved him, and wanted him right back.

__

Did she chose? Kenshin wondered, of Kaoru. _I think she did. Despite everything I put her through, she chose to come back to me._

When he opened the box and showed Carrie the ring, she squealed, and grabbed it, and said, "Yes! Yes, Yes!" sounding rather like she'd found a winning lottery ticket in her wallet. The ring fit perfectly, and then she was grabbing him and spinning him around in a most undignified fashion. George's camera flashed repeatedly.

"Oro!" He protested, a bit dizzy, and finally she set him down and kissed him, and then pranced -- pranced! to George to show her ring off.

"I've seen it," George said, with a tolerant smile on his face. "It's very pretty."

Morgan was standing behind George, hugging Nicki to her chest. She'd woken the baby up to pick her up, Kenshin noted. A little too loudly Morgan said, "I'm happy for you both."

Softer, and not looking at anyone, she said, "Really happy."

Carrie suddenly reached out and hugged Morgan, stretching over the baby to do it. "You're coming to the wedding, right?"

Morgan's eyes lit up a bit. "Yeah! Yeah, I'll come. Ooh, can I see your ring?"

Carrie held her hand out. Morgan inspected the ring. "Wow, what a rock. Girl, you're so lucky."

"I am." Carrie flashed Kenshin a smile. "That, I am."


	37. Epilogue

--

Epilogue

--

"Daddy!" Nicky said, "Hold on a second!"

"Huh?"

At eight, Nicky was a little taller than Kenshin -- and all arms and legs, like a half grown colt. She was smack in the middle of a growth spurt, and Kenshin suspected she would end up much taller before it was done. He'd been buying her new clothes practically every week.

Carrie teased him about being shorter than his daughter; he kept telling Carrie that pretty soon, it would be her turn to look upwards at the brat. There was height in the Trevor family tree, and it looked like Nicky had inherited some of those genes.

Nicky grabbed him by the tie, and proceeded to undo it and then reknot it, all the while rolling her eyes. "How old are you again? And you still can't tie a tie, Daddy. Geeze! I swear I'm just going to get you the clip-on kind."

He started to reach up and loosen it after she was done, and she swatted his hand away, to his amusement. "Leave it alone, Daddy, you look fine."

He shook his head, smiling, and followed her out of the hotel room and down the hall. She had on a rather sophisticated outfit of flowing skirts and a stylishly fitted bodice. He had refused to allow her to stuff the bosom. He was dismayed to note she actually was _developing _the beginnings ofone, weren't eight year olds supposed to still be babies?

"Do you really think my shoes match?" she asked him, as they waited for the elevator. She had on sparkly dress shoes with just the barest trace of a heel; Carrie had argued _no heels _and he'd indulgently allowed his daughter to pick them out anyway when he'd taken her to the mall to find a graduation-day outfit. They were cute, and not very high, and he thought Carrie was being silly. If Carrie had her way, however, Nicky would still be wearing Geranimals.

Carrie's fashion sense tended towards jeans and t-shirts ... and more jeans and t-shirts, and if the occasion required it, _designer _jeans and t-shirts. He was reasonably sure that Carrie would have jeans and a t-shirt on under her cap and gown, even if she was wearing high heels rather than her usual sneakers. Fortunately, in her chosen field -- pediatrics -- she could get away with wearing jeans and a t-shirt into work.

Nicky, by contrast, had been quite girly from basically the moment she'd been old enough to chose ruffles over denim. This dismayed Carrie, but suited Kenshin just fine. He liked tom-boys well enough, but if his little girl wanted to be a little girl, he had no objections. He thought she looked adorable in skirts and cute shoes.

And she was still pretty good with a bokken.

"I think your shoes look fine," he assured her.

"Of course, you have the fashion sense of a peacock on a bad drug trip," his eight year old daughter informed him, hands planted on her hips.

"Hey!" He protested. "Who -- where did you hear somebody say that?"

He doubted she'd come up with that analogy herself. Which meant he needed to go thump a friend for mentioning drugs in front of Nicky. Because Nicky had an alarming tendency to Google information about anything she didn't know, and he really didn't want her Googling about drugs. She was a good kid, overall, but he worried. Because she was also a smart kid, and her mind was always working a mile a minute, and not necessarily coming up with conclusions that he agreed with.

Before he could pursue this line of inquiry further, however, a door opened down the hall and Brandon stepped out with his gown slung over one arm and a respectable suit on. His cap perched on the top of his blond curls at a rackish angle.

"Brandon!" Nicky squealed, and ran to him. "I'll ask you. You're better at this sort of stuff than my father. What do you think of my shoes?"

Brandon inspected her toes gravely, when she stuck them out from under her skirts for inspection. Then, with a twinkle in his eyes, he said, "Honestly? I think they make your feet look big."

"Oooooh!" She hit him with her handbag, and chased him down the hall, then back up it.

Kenshin smiled faintly. It was good to see Brandon _run _-- stem cell therapy three years ago, and a lot of physical therapy, had fixed a good bit of the damage to his spine. He was a bit clumsy, and he wore orthotics on both feet, but he was _running_.

The two darted into the elevator when it opened, both giggling, and when he caught up, Brandon was menacing Nicky with wiggling fingers in a clear threat to tickle. She squealed, "Daddy! Help me!"

"Hold the elevator!" Shannon shouted behind them. He hurried down the hall with a toddler gripped in his arms. Kenshin stopped the door from sliding shut with his foot, while Brandon pounced on Nicky behind him. Her shriek was ear-splitting. When he turned back, Brandon had Nicky slung over his shoulder.

Brandon said, "I think there's fountains in front of this lobby..."

"Put me down!" Nicky thrashed about. "Daddy, Unc'Shannon, help!"

"Awwww, poor little Nicky," Brandon said, "needs her Daddy's help ..."

"It's Nicole!" Nicky protested. That was new; for the last few months she'd been insisting that everyone call her _Nicole _rather than Nicky. And everyone was pretty much ignoring that demand, to her indignation. "And you're wrinkling my dress!"

"Better put her down," Shannon advised. "The dress is really, really important. If it's wrinkled, the world's going to end ..."

The elevator opened on another floor, admitting Carrie and Meg. Carrie regarded Brandon with an uplifted eyebrow. "What are you doing to my kid this time?"

He grinned at Carrie and set Nicky back down. "Stealing her away to be my live-in babysitter."

"She's too young!" Carrie shook her head.

"I am not!"

She was, Kenshin thought, still too young for babysitting given that they still hired a babysitter for _her _when they went out. But in a few years, yeah, Shannon and Brandon would have a cheerfully willing sitter. Nicky was easily motivated by money; she didn't even _know _about her trust fund, and Kenshin liked it that way. There would be time enough to tell her about it later. He wanted her to be a normal kid, for now.

He was not surprised that the two had adopted a child. He _had _been surprised when he'd looked into the little boy's eyes and seen a familiar glower, along with a rather alarming nascent buzz. _Thank God he's not mine, _Kenshin had thought fervently. And then he'd cheerfully offered to teach little Henry swordsmanship, much to everyone's shock.

A very amused Chiyoko had suggested later, after _she _met the boy, that this was a chance for some well-deserved revenge. That, however, wasn't Kenshin's motivation. It was because the boy would have the sort of talent that needed to be developed and honed or it would consume him -- and because he'd need the training.

Kenshin was pretty sure Hiko had come back as an Immortal simply because it would piss him off.

He was also pretty sure Hiko hadn't counted on Kenshin changing his diapers and wiping his nose five days a week, while his parents both worked. Swords training would come later. Little Henry was still working on more basic skills, like using the big-boy toilet and not eating his dog's food.

Sometimes, karma was sweet.

Brandon wrapped an arm around Nicky's shoulders and said, in a conspiratorial tone, "In a few years, then, you can baby sit for us when your parents stop being so mean."

"Daddy!" Henry squirmed in Shannon's grip held his arms out to Brandon, apparently jealous that one of his parents was giving affection to another kid. Brandon tolerantly lifted the boy to his shoulders.

When the elevator dinged open in the lobby, Brandon handed Henry off to Kenshin and then yanked his gown over his head and jammed his cap back on. Shannon, with a roll of his eyes, proceeded to straighten Brandon's cap and gown.

Thus made presentable, Brandon laughed and then said, "Let's go, Carrie."

The two new doctors scurried off to the convention center across the street where graduation was being held.

"Nicky!" Morgan's voice carried across the lobby, a second after Carrie was out of earshot. "Honey!"

"Hi Morgan," Nicky said, turning to face the woman. With rather notably less enthusiasm than she had greeted Brandon and Shannon, Nicky said with a smile, "You came."

"I _was _invited." Morgan sounded defensive -- which was probably not because of anything Kenshin might say, but because Nicky had a remarkable ability to see right through her birth mother's motivations. Still, Morgan hugged her, and Nicky smiled.

"Did you get the dolls I sent you?" Morgan asked. "From Russia?"

"Yeah, Morgan. I got them. They're cute." Nicky said, summoning up a polite amount of enthusiasm. "I sent you a thank you note last week, but I bet you left London before it arrived."

The dolls in question were porcelain baby dolls, complete with pacifiers and cute little ethnic Russian costumes. Nicky had eyed them after opening the package for a minute, then set both dolls -- a boy and a girl -- on a shelf in her room. To Kenshin's knowledge, she'd never touched them, and likely, she'd regift them come next Christmas. At eight, Nicky was certain she was too old and sophisticated and grown-up for dollies.

Carrie, however, had eyed the dolls with a bit of longing. They'd been talking about adopting another baby and the dolls were newborn sized. Kenshin was pretty sure that Carrie had snuck into Nicky's room a few times while their daughter was at school and played with the dolls herself, but he wasn't going to say anything -- he valued his head too much!

The giant stuffed dragon he'd purchased Carrie eight years ago still occupied a place of honor on their bed. His _wife _wasn't ashamed of liking dollies and stuffed animals, and somehow, he found this very amusing.

If Morgan had wanted to really please Nicky, she could have sent her jewelry. The silver and emerald earrings in his daughter's ears were real, and had made her giddy for weeks -- they had been a birthday gift from her grandparents. Nicky teased her father about being a peacock, but she had her own distinct fondness for bright colors and flashy styles.

Morgan had been told about her daughter's preferences a few times. She never really listened.

Kenshin contemplated Morgan for a bit, as they waited for traffic to clear so they could cross to the convention center. She'd done well for herself, as he had more-or-less expected. She had a law degree, and was working for, of all things, a large international charity.

She said all the right things: that she'd taken a lower-paying job because it was the _right thing to do_, and she talked about making a difference in the world. And she was; her work mattered. However, Kenshin sometimes wondered if her real reason for taking a job with the charity was because she wasn't motivated by money, and she wanted to impress people. _Lawyer for a charity _sounded much better than _corporate lawyer _or _divorce lawyer_.

Morgan hadn't commented on her daughter's clothing, or the pretty earrings she was so proud of, or asked her about school, or about her parents, friends, or family. She hadn't noticed that Morgan had gained six inches in the last several months, or that her birth daughter had purple streaks in her carefully braided hair. Instead, Morgan was prattling on about her own recent trip to Russia.

"... And we went to St. Petersburg, and oh! you should see the old buildings, they're so neat. I took pictures. Maybe you can come by my hotel room later and look at them." Morgan bounced on her toes. "And there was this _really cute _boy at a local restaurant and he kept flirting with me and ..."

Kenshin reminded himself that Morgan was only twenty-four. To her, men were still _boys_.

Nicky cut in, "I got almost all A's last semester, Morgan."

"... that's great! I always did good in school too ... it's my genetics, you know. I'm glad you took after me there." And Morgan was off again, continuing with a tale about a river cruise on her Russian vacation.

He wasn't sure Morgan would ever realize what she was missing. His daughter was smiling at the woman who'd given birth to her, and was being polite, and he was so very proud of her for not being a brat when he himself would have been tempted to tell her off. Because Morgan was still talking about herself, and Nicky couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise even if she had tried.

He thought Morgan was trying to impress Nicky by bragging about her vacation. She was, however, forgetting that her audience was _eight _-- and not particularly interested in travel to St. Petersburg.

There were fountains in front of the auditorium where Carrie's -- and Brandon's -- graduation was scheduled. Here, they met a good number of the rest of his friends. And Morgan chattered at her daughter all the while, even when Nicky looked anxiously at all the adults she was really fond of and who she clearly wanted to greet. Morgan didn't even notice that Nicky was a bit distracted, but too polite to simply cut her birth mother off and walk away.

Danny had gone into the military after his graduation four years ago; Kenshin hadn't been surprised. He was wearing a dress uniform with officer's braids on his shoulders. Gone, entirely, was the street punk Kenshin had once nearly killed for trying to hurt Atsuko. Danny, now distinguished young officer, walked across the street towards them, waving a greeting.

He had his girlfriend Susie on his arm: Tsubame. She was as gentle and sweet as ever. Kenshin had smiled for days after she'd shown up. His cheeks had hurt, he'd smiled so much, and finally, Carrie had asked, "Another one?" And he'd had to confess yes, she was another reincarnation of a dead friend.

Sandy, too, was there, lounging on a bench beside a fountain, scribbling in a notebook. He looked up as they approached. He had a small package sitting beside them, and he picked it up and held it out to Kenshin's daughter. "Hey, brat," he said, affectionately to Nicky. "This is for you."

Nicky seized the gift and tore it open, revealing a comic book. A cartoon version of Nicky was on the cover -- Sandy had modeled his latest character, a pre-teen mutant, after "his favorite niece."

Because, after eight years, they were _that sort _of friends. Sandy was _Uncle Sandy _to Nicky. The kid had a whole close-knit circle of adults who considered her "their Nicky."

On the cover, Nicky's favorite earrings sparkled in mutant-girl's ears. Sandy told her, with a gleeful grin that told of his excitement at the impending publication, "It goes on the shelves next week, but you get an early preview."

She squealed and hugged him and then turned around ran to show Kenshin. He grinned, because it _was _a good likeness. And he was proud of Sandy, who'd dropped out of college to follow his dreams and then had made the dreams come true. Over the last eight years, Sandy had become quite a successful comic book writer and artist. "Congratulations," he told Sandy, who beamed, "I'm sure the new book will do well."

"Can I see?" Morgan asked.

Nicky handed her the comic with some reluctance. Morgan flipped through it, then said to Sandy, "Hey, would you draw me in?"

Sandy said, "Umm, I think I have all the characters designed already. It's not that easy ..."

Nicky cut him off. She grabbed the book back from Morgan and said angrily, "It's always about you, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

Kenshin almost smiled. His forecast for Nicky's temper had come true. He was proud of her for being polite up until now, but not at all upset that she would lose her temper now. This had been a long time coming.

Morgan took a step back as Nicky elaborated, "You! It's always about _you_. I don't even like to talk to you, because you only want to talk about what _you're _doing. You are always trying to be the center of attention! You're not happy unless you're getting something from someone. I hate you. You never give back! The only reason you even came here today was that you hoped I'd say nice things to you! It's not about seeing Carrie and Brandon graduate, it's still about _you._"

"I flew here all the way from London for you!" Morgan hissed.

"You flew here for _you_."

Nicky spun away from Morgan, tears trickling down her cheeks. She added, "I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_. But you make me so mad sometimes."

Morgan said shortly, "It's not true."

Kenshin had not realized how much Nicky had figured out, over the years. He put his arms around his daughter and hugged her. He'd never said an ill word about Morgan to his daughter... but Nicky had figured her out.

There was a glazed look in Morgan's eyes. She took a step away from the little girl. Then she said, "It's not true."

Kenshin said quietly, "It is. It has been, for as long as I've known you."

"It's not! It's not!" Morgan sounded younger than Nicky.

"It is! It is!" Nicky insisted, tearfully, from the circle of Kenshin's arms. "You even put a note in with those baby dolls, 'I always wanted dolls like these when I was little. Maybe we can play with them when we see each other next.' They were what _you _wanted. Not what I wanted! I don't play with dolls! I told you that last year, and said I liked jewelry and books!"

Kenshin hadn't wanted this sort of ugliness on a day of celebration. He didn't know how to repair it, either. His friends and quite a few spectators were staring at them in shocked, awkward silence. Morgan apparently realized that a scene had been created too, for she suddenly turned away. "I'm going back to my hotel room. I hate all of you."

But Kenshin had seen her eyes. They were dark, haunted, and suddenly very alone.

He let her go. Maybe the words of an angry child would have more impact on her than anything else in the world. Maybe she would change -- maybe.

Or not.

He didn't know.

He hugged his daughter closer, then stepped back, and dug out a handkerchief from his pocket. He dipped it in the fountain, and wiped the tears from his daughter's eyes. She suffered his attention silently, then suddenly buried her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I upset everyone."

And that, he thought, was the fundamental difference between mother and daughter. Nicky was sorry she'd upset everyone else. Morgan was upset, but only because Nicky had been angry with her. She wasn't much worried about anyone's feelings but her own.

"It's okay." He responded to her honestly; he figured if she was old enough to come to the conclusions she had just stated, she was also smart enough to understand this, as well. "You were the best person in the world to say those things to her. You may have made her think about her own life, and what she's missing in it."

After a bit, the others showed up: MacLeod and Richie, Methos and Tammy, Soujiro and Akane, Sasaki. And then Gloria and Gabe, Brandon and Sandy's parents, arrived. Kenshin smiled to himself as Gloria hugged Shannon and asked how her "third son" was doing -- Shannon's mother spoke to him occasionally, but his own father had effectively disowned him.

After greetings were finished, they went inside, and he watched Carrie and Brandon accept their diplomas, and they cheered until they were hoarse, and then after, they went out to a fancy dinner. People laughed, and toasts were made, and banter traded. They partied well into the night and everyone had a very good time.

After Nicky was in bed and sound asleep in the next room, he made love to Carrie, and then he fell asleep snuggled against her. As he drifted off to sleep, his final thought was that he was happy.

Life was good. He had friends, family, a child, and a wife he adored more than anything else. There were no crisis brewing, no emergencies that needed his attention.

He was simply _happy_.


End file.
